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PRESENTED BY 



NEWS FROM 
'SOMEWHERE' 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The Gordon Highlanders 

The Romance of a Pro-Consul 
(Sir George Grey) 

The Epistles of Atkins 

My Summer in London 

John Jonathan and Company 






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NEWS FROM 
'SOMEWHERE' 

BY JAMES MILNE 

WHEREIN MAY BE FOUND MANY 
THINGS SEEN, HEARD AND THOUGHT 
DURING TRAVELS AT HOME, ON SEA 
AND OVER-SEA IN THE WAR-TIME 
WHICH WE CALL "ARMAGEDDON" 



NEW YORK 

P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
1916 



ID 



Gift 
WAR 30 »«• 



Printed in Great Britain by 

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 

brunswick st., stamford st., s.e.. 

and bungay. suffolk. 



My Dear Arthur Waugh, 

We live in a time of ordeal, when good friend- 
ship is an especial good thing, and in token 
of that which has taken you and me down 
the years together, not always, perhaps, in 
the same boat, but always within the cry of 
an honest " Hullo ! " I would like to offer 
you this little book. 

It, at least, concerns the Time, for it is mostly 
a chronicle of war impressions, gathered during 
travel, near and far, on its edges, which are 
all about us, red and jagged ; but, just in 
that, sure signs of a national rising of spirit 
and forces such as our country, for all its past 
of dream and daring, of high ideal and high 
achievement, has never equalled. 

One whose business is on the public ways of life 
necessarily navigates this grand flood, feels 
the set of its current, and follows its slow swing 
through turmoil to the ultimate betterment of 
all mankind, because, in that, after an up- 
lifted patriotism and a purified soul, lies our 
only consolation against the awful sacrifices of 
Armageddon. 



There follows the desire to write into what words 
may be found for them, those gleams of great 
events making in the womb of Providence, if 
only because they might otherwise go unre- 
corded ; and you, in whom the fire of faith, as 
of friendship, is never cold, will understand 
what has been said and what has been left un- 
said, where so much escapes, or is unsayable, 
except in that ingot of wisdom, that golden 
text to Armageddon : 

A merry heart goes all the day, 
Tour sad tires in a mile-a! 

Yours, in sincerity, JAMES MILNE. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

I. SCOTLAND GATHERS! i 

II. THE NEW LONDON 7 

III. A KHAKI COUNTRYSIDE 13 

IV. POMANDERING IN WAR TIME 19 
V. THE BUSY KNITTERS 25 

VI. ECHOES OF THE STRIFE 33 

VII. BOOKING TO BATTLE 41 

VIII. BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 49 

IX, BEYOND THE FIRING LINE 61 

X. THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE 71 

XI. LONDON WAR PICTURES 81 

XII. THE ROAD TO FRANCE 89 

XIII. AS THE FRENCH SEE US 99 

XIV. LE ROI EDOUARD SEPT! 109 
XV. "DER TAG" IN PARIS 119 

XVI. A FAIRYLAND IN TOWN 129 

XVII. THE ROLL OF HONOUR 139 

XVIII. WHAT THE SEA TELLS 151 

XIX. SMALL TALK IN GREAT WATERS 161 

vii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



XX. THE WAR PARISIENNE 171 

XXI. A CALVARY OF ARMAGEDDON 181 

XXII. THE BAY OF BISCAY, O ! 191 

XXIII. A LAND OF HEALING 201 

XXIV. THE RED EDGE OF WAR 211 
XXV. THE FAITH WITHIN US 221 



vm 



I. SCOTLAND GATHERS'! 

When the crack of Armageddon came, Scotland, 
which has always loved a great cause and a 
martial air, stirred in her traditions. See 
her moving and the deep reasons for her 
concern, and how she looked, amid it all ! 
Now there are no young men in Scotland, 
because they are in France, many of them 
with her friendly soil for a grave. 

SOMEWHERE, August 1914. 

A YOUNG Scotswoman, who is an artist, 
has just struggled back to London from 
a far corner of France where she was painting — 
the universal cry to be " Home." " I saw the 
Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders 
march through Boulogne," she told me, " and 
I just shouted." So, she added, did all 
Boulogne, for it was a martial sight. 

Only yesterday morning I was sitting with 
a London Scotsman, a brilliant and poetic 
inventor, who is soon going to give the world 

B I 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

a boon which will help to assuage the wounds 
of this war. Suddenly he rose, half-opened 
the French window of his office in Victoria 
Street, near where the London Scottish have 
their headquarters, and listened, hand held 
to ear. " I thought," he said quietly, " that 
I heard the pipes ! " 

A week ago I was fishing as peacefully as 
one might, with the nation at war, on the 
most remote waters of the Aberdeenshire Don. 
Between casts I had lighted a contemplative 
cigarette, and I smoked it on the river bank, 
where that lay close by the high road. 

Presently I heard a long, low rumble, then 
I saw a cloud of dust advancing, and out of 
that drove a motor-bus. It was picking up 
the Territorials of the Strath for active service, 
and they went by me flying a Union Jack and 
the old Scottish flag with the lion rampant. 
Its folds cried the old defiance, Nemo me 
impune lacessit ! and they cheered " Good-bye." 

Those three things seen, give a living 
glimpse of Scotland's attitude towards the 
war. Her martial spirit has been touched as 
it has not been touched since the Napoleonic 
wars of a hundred years ago. The young men 

2 



SCOTLAND GATHERS 

are flying to the colours, and trie young women 
are bidding them go and weeping afterwards. 

Sentiment is strong in Scotland, herself a 
little nation, and she is keen for the cause of 
little nations like Belgium and romantic, re- 
surgent Poland. This sentiment leads straight 
to the battle instinct in Scottish blood, and it 
has been greatly stirred. 

Scotsmen think, and Scotswomen help them 
to do it, and the big things behind the war 
are understood and talked about. It is a 
struggle between the nations of light and 
idealism and those of " blood and iron," a 
hideous tournament to decide whether Europe 
is to live on the heights of freedom and peace 
or in the valleys of force and materialism. 

Those are the issues which unbare them- 
selves to the reflective Scottish people when 
the curtains of diplomacy and the clatter of 
ultimatums are drawn aside and the beyond 
surveyed. Therefore, Scotland passed from a 
sober prayer that there might be no war, to 
a prayerful resolve that it shall be fought 
through to the happy world's end, whatever 
betides. 

Moreover, this war is very near Scotland, 
3 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

for its naval side is in her ocean, the North 
Sea. Her coasts are ringed with men quietly 
on the watch to defend them, and on the 
waters, out of sight, float British battleships 
charged with the same mission. Where, be- 
fore, there were a hundred men in ports, 
keeping the guns polished, there are now 
thousands ready to fire them. If you are 
crossing the Forth Bridge, look down, and 
you will see batteries trained seaward, and 
waspish torpedo-boats straining at their anchor- 
age. At bridges and stations of importance 
you will catch sight of a bunch of khaki Terri- 
torials on sentry-go, keen, intelligent fellows. 
Watch as you roll through the Lothians and 
Fifeshire, and squadrons of horsed troops, 
drilling, will flash by you. 

A martial war spirit and evidence of it are 
in every corner of Scotland, but there are no 
excitements, no braggings, and no fears. You 
go forth with a rifle to do your duty, or you 
stay at home and equally discharge it. The 
Territorial whom the doctor rejects is an 
unhappy man, but he throws his unhappiness 
into an extra hour's work for a neighbour 
whose best scythesman has been chosen. The 

4 



SCOTLAND GATHERS 

die has been cast, let its settling leave the world 
nearer Heaven, if meanwhile it must be Hell. 
That is the immediate meaning of the cry 
which rang out a century ago near where 
history is again being written — " Scotland for 
ever ! " 

It is a great cry, worthy of a great occasion — 
like Armageddon ! But a Scottish ear also 
listens for the still, small voice of the individual 
heart going to the war, or left at home, and 
finds it in the gallant Marquis of Montrose's 
lyric, " To My Love : " 

My dear and only Love! I pray 

That little world of thee 
Be govern'd by no other sway 

Than purest monarchy : 
For if confusion have a part 

Which virtuous souls abhor, 
And hold a synod in thy heart, 

I'll never love thee more. 
***** 
But if thou wilt prove faithful, then, 

And constant of thy word, 
I'll make thee famous by my pen, 

And glorious by my sword. 
I'll serve thee in such noble ways 

Was never heard before; 
I'll deck and crown thy head with bays 

And love thee more and more. 



II. THE NEW LONDON 

To London flocked the peoples, driven out of 
their own countries, Belgium and Northern 
France, by the Great War and German 
" J rightfulness. " So London, greeting new 
folk, as London always has greeted strangers 
in adversity, took unto herself new human 
characteristics. She became Cosmopolis in 
Armageddon time and, as such, claims our 
high interest. 



SOMEWHERE, August 19 14. 

OUR ancient English town of London was 
never so much. Cosmopolis as it is at this 
ungracious time of Armageddon. " See Paris 
and die ! " good Americans used to say, or, 
at all events, were supposed to say. " See 
London and be safe ! " Americans, French 
and Belgians have been saying. 

They have simply tumbled into London 
from the countries where the horrible game 
of war is actually being played. They have 
come from stricken homes, and London has 
held out a mother's welcome to them. She 
has the priceless gift of motherliness, for 
making even the strangers within her gates 
at home. 

More, her motherly mood is very tender to 
all those incoming peoples, inexhaustibly tender. 
You almost think that she worries about them, 
is glad when they have found bed and board 
within her walls. London has always been 

9 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

hospitable, but she has never before been 
called upon for such a spacious hospitality. 

Come the alien with money or without it, 
he is welcome, and the kindest words of 
Shakespeare's kindly tongue fall on his ears. 
" There is no land like England " — for hospi- 
tality. No, not when she has been stirred 
to the heart by a Hunnish tale of outrages. 
" Come one, come all," she says, and she 
means it. 

You see as much in the gentleness of our 
people to the strangers, in their eagerness to 
do some service for them. It may be to 
speak French, and when the average English- 
man launches himself into a foreign language 
his heart is, indeed, in his mouth. You see 
the good feeling in a hundred forms, but here 
is a specially fine case. 

Three British soldiers back from Mons with 
slight wounds were taking the air on a 'bus. 
They offered their pennies between war-like 
cries of " Are we down-hearted ? No ! " The 
conductor would not take the coppers, say- 
ing, " You have a joy-ride, my boys." Then 
he went to collect the fares of a stranger 
man, his wife and their two children. It 

10 



THE NEW LONDON 

appeared that they were Belgian refugees, 
and instantly the Tommies held up the con- 
ductor with, " You've got to have our pennies 
for them. Are we down-hearted ? No ! " 

It was a much prettier incident to feel 
than it can be shown in words, but anyhow 
it represents London mothering her guests 
from France and Belgium. The Americans 
don't need looking after because they have 
" ways and means " and only desire to be 
directed to a hotel. They have probably had 
hard travelling across a Europe in the throes 
of war, but a night's sound sleep puts that 
right. With the French and the Belgians it 
is different ; sometimes they scarcely know 
where to lay their heads, but London provides 
the pillows. Maybe these are unadorned with 
lace, not even soft with down, but the blessing 
of a rest, undisturbed by an Uhlan, is sure, 
and that is heaven. 

If you can forget the sadness which has 
made London a new Cosmopolis you will 
love the human pictures that fill her streets. 
Take a walk from the Temple to Oxford 
Circus, and you will see a panorama of varied 
peoples and clothes such as there can scarcely 

ii 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

have been before in any world's city. On 
every side you hear French spoken, sometimes 
with the accent of Paris, at other times with 
the broader accent of Brussels. Men, women 
and children, here they are, hundreds and 
hundreds of them, from that drive of the 
Germans through Belgium and down into 
France. Their presence brings home to us 
the nearness of the war, especially at night, 
when there are no flaring street lights as 
before, when the town is half in darkness. 

But it is in no wise an unkindly darkness 
which the war has brought to London of 
evenings. It wraps one round not with cold 
fear, but with warm protection. A touch of 
artistic shadow belongs to it, and this enables 
London to hide her blushes as she reflects that 
she is the hostess of uprooted peoples who are 
learning to love her. 



12 



III. A KHAKI COUNTRYSIDE 

Great are the human changes which war brings, 
especially to the English countryside, so fixed 
in its comely features, so sure of its quiet life. 
Therefore a mirror that we may well look into, 
confronts us, and who would refuse to consult 
it ? Moreover, no countryside is a sweeter 
mirror than Kent, with khaki to match 
nature's hues of the autumn. 



SOMEWHERE, September 19 14. 

THE war has changed the human face of 
the country a good deal, as you will 
discover if, say, you take a long motor ride 
through Kent. 

It is very beautiful, for the leaves on the 
trees have kept their green well this year, and 
there are still flowers blooming freshly. The 
hops are nearly ripe, and when you come near 
a field of them the wind brings you a touch 
of their curious, intoxicating scent. 

But Kent scenery is like that, out of war, 
and it is its new human colour that interests 
us. This can be expressed in a sentence by 
saying that you come upon khaki uniforms 
wherever you go. They are on horses or 
bicycles or afoot, sometimes also in a motor- 
car ; only there they go all the time. 

Canterbury, the old capital of Kent, is 
always a garrison town, but to-day it seems 
to radiate soldiers and Territorials into all 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

the surrounding country. Raw horses are 
being broken in, and you wonder whether the 
process is hardest on the horse or on the 
rider, who probably has no saddle. Wagons 
with rations, and other wagons meant to 
carry deadlier things, meet you and instinc- 
tively are given the right-of-way. That little 
circumstance is the recognition of the military 
life abroad in Kent, the majesty of the nation 
dressed in khaki. 

You may, if you drop into a wayside inn 
for something to eat, hear great tales of great 
happenings. Oh, yes, a brace of spies were 
captured under the very shadow of Canterbury 
Cathedral, tried in due form and with all 

dispatch, and ? You wait for the rest, 

and you get it in a whispered question, " Well, 
what should happen to spies ? " Who would 
spoil an uncanny story which you will hear 
adapted to various parts ? It is the atmo- 
sphere of place becoming vocal, in response 
to the khaki. 

Here, however, told in quite general terms, 
is a home-keeping war story, which probably 
did happen. A hunting lady had three horses, 
to each of which she was much attached. A 

16 



A KHAKI COUNTRYSIDE 

man in horse authority came and said he was 
afraid he would have to take them for the 
army. She pleaded that at least one might 
be left to her, although, indeed, it would be 
hard for her to make a choice. The official 
man answered that he would have to consult 
his superior officer before he could promise 
this, and went off to do so. The lady hurriedly 
summoned a " vet.," and had the horses shot 
rather than let them go to the war. What 
would you say to her ? 

She would have been promptly in trouble if 
she had run against an armed patrol, or been 
challenged by a picket at some cross-roads. 
The patrols march past you, satisfied with a 
look, but one of the soldiers forming the picket 
holds up a warning hand while you are still 
some distance away. Stop you must, anyhow, 
because there is a soldier in the middle of 
the road with a bayonet shining on his rifle. 
" Where are you going ? " You answer. 
Possibly there is a second question, " Where 
have you come from ? " You are seen to be 
harmless, and may pass on. 

It is long since all this was seen in English 
Kent, perhaps a hundred years ago, and, 
c 17 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

indeed, there are curious human resemblances 
between the way our forefathers rose to repel 
" Boney " and the way in which we have 
mustered, to " stand, a wall of fire, around our 
much-loved isle." 



18 



IV. POMANDERING IN WAR TIME 

Armageddon sent home all the fashionable 
English people who had been making holiday 
on the Continent, except those who were 
caught in its tide.. What on earth should 
they do " in town" with the autumn on 
hand, an unheard-of situation ! Why, make 
the best of things and a bounty of good 
weather, by meeting and pomandering in 
Rotten Row. 



SOMEWHERE, September 1914. 

THERE is an old diary, whose author one 
forgets, which has a passage like this : 
" Met his lordship pomandering, and talked of 
the war, for we live in Eighteen and war 
time." To-day we may say " Nineteen and 
war time," and it has given London a second 
season of pomandering in Rotten Row. 

People who were abroad have scrambled 
home as best they could ; people who were 
going abroad have not gone, and what should 
they do in sunny weather like yesterday's but 
sit in the " Row " and discuss the war ? 
There is no parade of fashion — events are too 
anxious, too tremendous for that — and there 
is no display of wealth. It is not the " note " 
of the London season which you now find 
in the " Row," but another softer, more 
democratic note. 

One touch of nature, as we know, makes 
the whole world kin ; and the folk of a nation 
21 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

feel the same coming-togetherness when they 
are deep in a great war. The man who 
throws away a half-smoked cigarette and the 
tattered fellow who waits to pick it up, have 
an inclination to say something over its embers 
about the war. Is there anything new ? 
What is the very latest dispatch ? So, too, 
as between women in pretty frocks and their 
sisters in frocks less pretty, sitting near them 
on park chairs. There is no disdainfulness on 
the one hand, no resentfulness of it on the 
other ; but a sympathy, as much as to say, 
" Yes, we all have dear men at the front." 

The red line of battle is brought near by 
the drilling of new soldiers which goes on 
continuously in Hyde Park. Detachments in 
khaki, or still in their civilian clothes, are 
swinging along, here, there, and everywhere. 
They even sweep across the " Row " or through 
it, taking with them a glance of appreciation 
from all on-looking non-combatants. Not 
since the railings were pulled down by the 
Chartists and the Iron Duke's windows broken, 
has Hyde Park known so much stir meaning 
something. Those young fellows who are so 
earnestly becoming soldiers, will, in a few 

22 



POMANDERING IN WAR TIME 

months' time, be meeting the enemy on the 
battlefields of Europe. It is no far cry from a 
sight of them to the last sight of some of them. 

Two war units, the drill sergeant who 
orders the young soldiers into shape, and 
the ragamuffin boy scouts who enlist and 
drill themselves, are having a wonderful time 
in Hyde Park. Never was the drill sergeant 
so full of work, and though recruits may be 
stupid he keeps patient and good-natured. 
Never were the little fellows who play at 
scouts in Hyde Park quite so martial. The 
atmosphere is all with them, and they are 
taking advantage of it. 

They have invented a war game in which 
each country is represented by a boy. Of 
course every boy wants to be Britain, but 
most of them are content to be France, Russia, 
or gallant little Belgium. But Germany ! No 
boy wants to play Germany, because she has 
been the evil-genius of the war, and because, 
a boy's reason, she is destined, in the end, to 
get licked. Oddly enough, Austria carries no 
great feeling one way or another, and older 
public opinion has the same characteristic. 
An opponent, yes ; not really a bitter enemy. 

23 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

That, or something like that, is Hyde Park 
in war, and it is worth your looking at, espe- 
cially as the flowers are still blooming in it. 
Their flaming beauty of June is long gone, 
but they remain beautiful, and the leaves of 
the trees, though their sweetest green is faded, 
have not yet begun to fall. They are fresher, 
those leaves, than the brigade of men-about- 
town — " weary-looking rips," a sharp-tongued 
lady was heard to call them — who pomander 
in Rotten Row during the season, and who 
have returned to it again, strangely brought 
back by the war wave. 

Altogether it is worth dipping into Hyde 
Park of a forenoon or afternoon, and the 
multitude of Americans " held up " in London 
are discovering this. They are almost con- 
verting Rotten Row into a " Peacock Parade," 
such as they have in New York. Why not ? 
It helps to brighten us at a time when we 
are all very serious in our thoughts. Moreover, 
our American cousins are very friendly, very 
sympathetic, better pleased to be " held up " 
here than in any other place outside their own 
Great Republic. 



H 



V. THE BUSY KNITTERS 

With winter in sight across the Narrow Seas 
warm mittens, scarves, socks, what you will 
in woollen comfort, must be at the service of 
our soldiers in plenty. Hence the women of 
the nation set themselves to knit, their hearts 
in every loop made by their nimble fingers. 
It is a picture we should preserve, this, of 
the knitters, knitting for dear lives. 



SOMEWHERE, October 19 14. 

Knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice 
comforted her hands to work. 

Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. 

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde 

That from the nunnerie 
Of that chaste breast and quiet minde, 

To warre and armes I flie. 

Richard Lovelace. 

ALL our women, most of our girls, and here 
and there a man, like an old colonel, 
whom I met in an hotel the other day, are 
knitting, knitting, knitting ! They are not 
singing, as women naturally do when they sit 
by the fire and feel home all about them. 
Then they sing " soft and sweet and low," 
because they must, to express the woman's 
contentment, which is the sun of the happy 
fireside. There is no lullaby, for it is generally 
that, to be heard now, but a great unsung song 
of the heart goes into the knitting. 

Its well-spring is the woman's tender sym- 
pathy, you may even call it love, for the 
27 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

soldiers at the front, the men who must fight 
while she weeps. Socks and mittens, scarves 
and woollen helmets seem a poor expression of 
this devotion, these being inanimate things. 
But they are the natural testaments into which 
the average woman at home can put her 
services, and she will not remain idle. The 
nation's needs and her own womanhood call 
and she must be up and doing — knit-knit- 
knitting, morning, noon and night, another 
" Song of the Shirt," to a very different tune. 

The woman's first place in the war is to be 
the comforter, and that mission, in its active 
form, means the nurses and the knitters. In 
both cases good hearts and good hands are 
the qualification, and when Thomas Atkins, in 
hospital with a broken leg, thanks his nurse 
in his own fashion by joking about it, he does 
not forget the knitters at home. 

He is a man of imagination, like everybody 
in whom there dwells true and unspoiled 
kindness ; of imagination and its comrades, a 
sense of humour and pathos. How could he 
forget the busy knitters across the Narrow Seas 
who are thinking of him all the time ? Are 
not his old mother, his anxious wife, or his 
28 



THE BUSY KNITTERS 

golden little daughter all knitting ? He sees in 
them the other women of England and Scot- 
land, of Ireland and Wales, of Greater Britain 
likewise, and he understands, and is comforted. 

This knitting, the flight of the needles in 
nimble hands, or their slow awkwardness in 
others untried, is, therefore, a wonderful link 
between the sacredness of home and the mud- 
plastered, gun-deafened man in the trenches. 
The knitters, whether they work singly or in 
groups, do not say so, partly because women 
rarely find words for their deepest thoughts, 
partly because they sometimes like to be silent 
and let the men find out. But they all know 
and feel what is behind the knitting, its 
spirituality, transmitted to the battle-field by 
the field-telegraph of a woman's heart, its solid 
usefulness in keeping the men fit for the ordeal 
through which triumph can only come, aye, 
and its necessity for the woman herself, unless 
the nerves of her delicate being are to break 
under the strain of watching, hoping, praying. 

A soldier in the fight has every impulse to 
carry him forward, the clash of historic events 
around his own personality, the gamble of his 
life against another's, the " top of the fulness of 

29 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

things," as some happy warrior has finely put it. 
But the woman — the sweetheart, the wife, the 
mother — can only serve by standing and waiting, 
by sitting and knitting, until her eyes will no 
longer follow the loops, and you go and compel 
her to drop them, lest they all be dropped. 

Naturally the national knitting has its 
lighter side, a less true side which we create 
to help us from thinking over-much of the 
other. There are, perhaps, the knitters who 
rather play a game of " Let's pretend ! " who 
knit because it is the fashion, and make one 
sock go a mighty long way, like the British 
Army itself. Well, at least they are kept out 
of the mischief of losing money at afternoon card 
parties in war time, when there should be none. 
There are probably those who, where one or two 
women meet together in the name of socks, gossip 
more than they weave. But, again, being en- 
tirely busy of tongue, even to a pinch of scandal, 
they hold the others silent and the communal 
click of the needles tells what is being achieved. 

Every knitter has her uses, although she may 
not knit much or well, as we perceive when 
we dip into the philosophy of the business. 
Moreover, it is giving us types like the " beauty 

30 



THE BUSY KNITTERS 

knitter " who, so trie critical young girls declare, 
uses her occupation to emphasise her own best 
points. What a scheming person she must be ! 
She has to begin by getting the right-coloured 
wool, a shade that will match her complexion, 
or her eyes, or her frock. Her preference is 
for scarves rather than socks, because they are 
more romantic and, be it added on womanly 
authority, easier to work. This, too, is a better 
field in which a pair of well-shaped hands may 
glint about. If the scarf be dropped in an 
absent moment, why, the first cavalier happen- 
ing that way — for knitting is everywhere — must 
pick it up and restore it, while a half-made sock 
he might miss, or, correct fellow, shy at. So 
all the gifts of the most subtly-gifted sex may 
find an expression in the knit-knitting, and 
surely that is fortunate when we think of the 
greater glory which results for Private Thomas 
Atkins and the spirit of the nation. 

Even the mere man — the husband, the 
father, the brother — looks in, if it be only in a 
somewhat patronising, stiffly tolerant fashion. 
At breakfast, lunch and dinner — he avoids tea ! 
— he hears a constant chatter about " loop and 
carry one," and he asks, " Couldn't you buy all 

31 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

those things cheaper and better at the shops ? " 
Poor fellow; he doesn't reflect that it is the 
making of them which is the woman's true 
service at this time and her own salvation. 
He may even be one of those fellows who 
could never understand this, for there are 
such men, and they are entirely honourable 
citizens, though terribly dull to live with. 
They will put their foot in the knitting, by 
quoting a verse from Robert Burns : 

The weary pund, the weary pund, 

The weary pund o' tow; 
I think my wife will end her life 

Before she spin her tow. 

That is not the anthem of the knitters, not 
the tune their needles play. They say nothing 
in song, but much in the sincere melody of 
silence. It is always the heart that matters, 
especially at a crack of doom like this war. 
Every soldier at the front, officer or man, is 
the collective husband, father, or son of every 
woman at home. It is a national motherhood, 
a race sisterhood, and more, but the knitting 
needles only murmur with an old poet : 

If all the Earthe were paper white, and all the sea were incke, 
'Twere not inough for me to write, as my poore hart 
doth thinke. 

32 



VI. ECHOES OF THE STRIFE 

On quiet days you might, in the parts of England 
nearest to the war-zone, fancy you heard the 
rumble of guns. Those of naval fighting in 
the North Sea have certainly been heard by the 
pheasants, which were alarmed and " buzzed " 
about. Everybody strains an ear for war 
news, and most people meet some that never 
gets into the papers, as what follows. 



SOMEWHERE, November 1914. 

ONE likes the war news which is not really 
war news, but is just blown in by the 
winds, as tidings are said to travel in the 
desert. You take it all as it comes, for good or 
for ill, neither accepting nor questioning it. 

To reject it absolutely would be to challenge 
the possibility that atmosphere may com- 
municate the echoes of far events. Anyhow, 
we live in so wonderful a time that it is well 
to have faith even with wonders. If we must 
breakfast and dine upon rumours, at least let 
us have confidence in the marvels of the 
Censor, dear man ! 

Past him, out of the echoed gossipage there 
come little things which carry their own 
acceptance, because they have the touch of 
personality. Now there is a small English 
gentleman who is a cadet at the Navy's training 
college down in the Isle of Wight. He wrote 
to his grandfather the other week, and what 

35 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

do you suppose he said in a fine round hand ? 
" We all think here that the Admiralty is 
doing very well ! " That was what he said, 
and it was meant to put at ease the grand- 
father, who has an East Coast house much too 
nice to be spoiled by a German shell. 

Again, there is a brilliant soldier who is 
taking his own full part of battle work in 
France, and he wrote home a particularly 
zestful letter. It was zestful because it de- 
scribed a paper-chase in which he had taken 
part ; a little bit of recreation for a dull after- 
noon, without fighting. The race went ad- 
mirably to its destined end of amusing, for it 
landed several senior officers and a general of 
division all democratically in a brook ! 

These are two little gleams, shot out from 
the dank fog of war which lies over us all. 
Such gleams light up the tea-cups of an after- 
noon and the dinner-table of an evening. 
They are so inconsequential that they are 
mightily comforting, and we must not lose 
our sense of humour, because there is no finer 
tonic for life, even in war time. It is this 
vitality which fills our soldiers with song as 
they go marching on, up and down and across 

3 6 



ECHOES OF THE STRIFE 

London, training themselves for the call to 
action which will come. 

Atkins the Simon Pure, who 'listed in peace 
time because he loved it, went to France lilt- 
ing " Tipperary," and it is in high favour for 
its stepping note with the new Kitchener 
soldier and with the "Terriers." Naturally 
they have a wider range of song and music 
than Thomas, and they let it be heard. There 
is one London battalion which likes that 
grandest of all war-tunes, the " Marseillaise." 
There is another which often sings of John 
Brown, the hymned hero of the American 
Civil War, and loves to tramp to the swing of 
" Marching Through Georgia." But we have 
a wealth of old British songs in reserve which 
should be called in, and one watches for their 
new vogue. Take " The Girl I Left Behind 
Me," a forerunner of " Tipperary," and a far 
finer song : 

The dames of France are fond and free, 

And Flemish lips are willing, 
And soft the maids of Italy, 

And Spanish eyes are thrilling. 
Still though I bask beneath their smile, 

Their charms fail to bind me, 
And my heart falls back to Erin's isle, 

To the girl I left behind me. 

37 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

It is as pleasant to listen to a soldier man 
singing while he marches as it is to see a girl 
dance. The melody and the motion both 
appeal to our sentiment and thus gather us 
into a harmony. Might the soldiers in camp 
not be given singing lessons, or, at all events, 
have the songs of their school-days revived in 
their ears ? 

Perhaps a sympathetic interest in this sense 
on the part of the British public would do 
good, but it isn't always thoughtful. It lets 
a regiment of men go by without salutation, 
without any outward recognition of its regard 
for what that regiment represents. The ad- 
miration, the thanks, the comradeship are 
there all right, but the lifting of hats by men, 
the waving of a gloved hand by the women, 
where are these ? 

Still, one forgets. There are the servant- 
maids looking on, not from the pavements of 
fashionable streets, but hanging gallantly from 
the windows high up, and they are hearty 
enough. A soldier, whether he be regulation 
T. A., a Kitchener lad of, shall we say, social 
position, or a " Terrier " ditto, is always a 
hero, and not merely half a one, to London's 

38 



ECHOES OF THE STRIFE 

Mary Ann. She flings her cap at him in the 
warmth of her heart, and only regrets that she 
cannot do it in fact> because she hasn't another 
until the " washin' " comes home, and Missus 
is a stickler on that matter and " followers " — 
" particular soldiers ! " 

Poor Mary Ann ! She has found it hard 
to " keep up " her cooking with the bagpipes 
crying down the street of a forenoon, calling 
to her in a way she cannot resist. But she 
has done her duty to the " lads who march 
away before the break of day," or later. She 
has heartened them by her salutations, and a 
mob-cap may, to this soldier or the other, be 
the insignia of victory on the plains near 
Waterloo. 

Our many French-speaking visitors set us an 
example in their attitude to the soldier, officer, 
or private. They have a recognition for him, 
and not merely that ; there is appreciation 
in their attitude of quiet attention when he is 
met. They know, thanks to their daily life in 
Europe, that his uniform expresses the force 
which stands between them and the knell of 
invasion. He has always stood for that to 
them, and they show it by a salute, on the 

39 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

part of a man, and by a kindly glance on the 
part of a woman. Possibly trie bashful English 
soldier receives both marks of concern with 
awkwardness, but they gratify him at heart. 
Maybe, when Mademoiselle La Belle France 
turns the corner of her eye swiftly and approv- 
ingly on him, he wishes he could thank her in 
French. 

Why not ? For gallantry, happily, is not 
limited by the tongues people speak, and war 
gives it warmth. 



40 



VII. BOOKING TO BATTLE 

The going of the soldier to the Great War ! 
That, the mother and the wife, must count 
upon, and they face it bravely. When will 
he come back, or will he come back ? The 
clank-clank of the train which takes him 
away, offers no answer. But there is a new 
touch of human nature about the war trains 
from London to France, and it is discoverable. 



SOMEWHERE, December 19 14. 

Will they all come back, our ain dear men ? 
Will they all come back, our Hielan' men ? 

Old Scottish Song. 

And are ye sure the news is true, and are ye sure he's weel ? 
Is this a time to think o' work ? Ye jades, fling by your 

wheel. 
Is this a time to think o' work, when Jockie's at the war ? 
Reach down my cloak, I'll to the quay and see him come 

ashore. 

There' 9 s Nae Luck About the House. 

THE still, small voice of human nature is 
always behind the heavy creak of the 
machinery which drives the world round, and 
those old Scottish ballads have the notes, sad 
and glad, which the war trains sing. Every- 
body may not hear them, because, happily 
perhaps, second-hearing, like second-sight, is 
not given to everybody, but the song is there. 
" Out " and " In " run the trains, to all 
appearance a very unpoetic warp and weft of 
the going over the Narrow Seas of our soldiers 
and the coming home of some of them on 
43 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

leave. If, however, you will call in a little 
imagination and look under the hard, plain 
picture of Victoria Station, London, S.W., you 
will see — well, what you will see. 

Nothing could be more touching and sugges- 
tive than the scenes which attend the departure 
of the afternoon " war train " for France. 
Wives and sisters, sweethearts and cousins, all 
go to Victoria to say good-bye to their men- 
folk bent on the battle trail. The men are 
courageously gay, and busy themselves with 
those little arrangements which may be made 
to cover the deepest feelings. The women are 
outwardly brave, strung to repose, saying little. 
They just wait and look at the clock as it draws 
near the hour for the departure of somebody, 
mind you, who may never return. It is a 
parting which affects one keenly, all the more 
because its human side is held so well in hand, 
so severely suppressed, as is the British manner. 

A distinguished Frenchman who happened 
on one occasion to travel by this " war train " 
said to an English friend who was bidding 
him good-bye : " You British are very calm, 
very quiet. No tears here, or if there are 
any they are brushed away quickly. But, as 
44 



BOOKING TO BATTLE 

we know in France, your soldiers are the 
gayest, the merriest of fighting men." It was 
a keenly analytical estimate of the British 
temperament from the French point of view, 
full of compliment as well as of insight. 

The departure bell rings, with its harsh, 
strident noise, and every one who is going by 
the train steps into it. There is a tense minute 
while the doors are being shut, while the 
guard whistles to the engine-driver and then 
waves to him with his flag that all is clear. 
This is the worst, the most trying moment of 
the going away, because everything has been 
said and everything has been left unsaid, and 
all the women on the platform are wondering, 
although they hardly know it themselves, when 
next they will meet their dear ones. When 
will they return — when, and how ? 

That is the setting-out, a train laden with 
high hopes, and the heavy hearts of those left 
behind, a train of destiny which only time will 
unveil for every man upon it. Its burden, as 
it gathers speed and rumbles out of the station, 
is as of hearts beating, as of empty places and 
waiting moments, but with, over all, an exultant, 
uncried cry of " England, home and beauty." 

45 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

This thought is actually realised when the 
later, home-coming " war train " steams 
slowly into Victoria Station, full of happy 
warriors back from the front for a few days. 
They had hoped they were to get leave, they 
had written their hopes to their home-folk ; 
but always there is the accident of war, and 
nobody knows just who will arrive. That 
adds to the fevered expectancy of the company 
which awaits the train, and what a loving rush 
there is, what a craning of necks and shouting 
of names when doors fly open and out tumble 
the war-worn men from the trenches. They 
look as if they had been through the wars, for 
their clothes are threadbare, their weapons 
business-like, not ornamental. 

Such is the general impression you get while 
you wait for the young officer you have come 
to meet, a charming boy who left his heart 
behind him in London and has come back to 
find it waiting for him now, ripened into a 
woman's heart. It is a privilege to be on the 
outskirts of a lovers' meeting, where little or 
nothing is said and everything is felt. Your 
turn to say a welcome arrives by-and-by, and 
then you see in your friend's eyes what you have 

4 6 



BOOKING TO BATTLE 

learned to look for in the eyes of every man who 
has been for weeks in the trenches ; a certain 
far-away light, a touch of other-worldness, such 
as visits those who have mixed with death. 

It is the legacy of lying long under gun-fire, 
of seeing violent shells bursting about you, of 
having friends slain close to you, of wading 
through slaughter for the sacred cause to which 
England has called her sons. It is a spiritual 
thing, which cannot very well be put into 
words, because no man speaks of it, no man 
admits it, and after a day or two of rest, it 
passes away, and the eyes in whose depths 
there seemed to abide something unknown, 
almost uncanny, gather back their native 
colour and fire. 

Speak for a moment with our young friend 
and he will tell you that war is hard, but 
that it is fine, that it is a personal ordeal to 
the last degree, but that he is glad he has been 
in it. Glad to go back also ? He laughs that 
question aside by saying he has a week's leave. 
He knows that it is a question which has to 
be answered in two moves ; in terms of the 
trenches, where men have to claw like animals, 
burrowing in the hard clay of Flanders for 
47 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

their very lives, passing the days and nights 
like troglodytes ; and in the higher terms of 
what one owes to one's own manhood and to 
one's country. 

Possibly those thoughts will not pass in 
words between more than two people, among 
all the meetings that take place when the 
incoming train sets down its passengers. They 
will, however, be the text of the whole con- 
gregation, the deeps communing in feeling, 
the heart speaking, where the tongue is silent. 
It is a glad, glad home-coming, and yet, as in 
all high gladness, there lies beneath it a strain 
of the sadness which is never absent when pure 
affection is concerned. " Home is the warrior, 
home from the war." But only for a little 
while, and he is going back to those desperate 
trenches again, perhaps to make his D.S.O. into 
a V.C. ; perhaps to be lost in the hazard of war. 

It is difficult to think of a railway station as 
hallowed ground ; but, at Victoria, all the 
war forces which are at work within our 
subtler nature come together for a brief hour 
or so, and, maybe, it is good for us to be under 
their influence. They bring a holy sobriety 
which purifies, a spirituality which uplifts. 

4 8 



VIII. BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 

Aren't the letters of Mr. Thomas Atkins from 
the battlefield, to his people at home, wonderful 
and most wonderful ? One is tempted by the 
human uplift which they confer, to address 
him back again, relying chiefly on his own 
magical language for success in the effort. 
So be it ; an epistle of appreciation to him, 
for his priceless epistles to us. 



SOMEWHERE, December 19 14. 

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
Rescue my castle before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery grey. 
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 

Robert Browning. 

YOU like song, dear Private Atkins, its lilt 
and its sentiment, and you have been 
singing your way through battle, on the hills 
of France and the plains of Belgium. You are 
really a poet, as well as a first-rate fighting man, 
though the very idea will make your camp-fire 
rock with laughter. Well, in your letters from 
the war to the old folk and the young folk at 
home, you have written things worthy to be 
bound in cloth of gold. 

You have, in particular, being a natural 
fellow, written yourself to them, and you are 
just splendid, singly and collectively. You 
look out from your epistles with a smile on 
your lips, humour in one eye and a touch of 
the devil in the other, and you cry, " Are we 

Si 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

down-hearted ? " " No ! " gladly answer we, 
who have been listening to the news of battle 
ringing down the street, and for a moment, 
perhaps, forgetting you and your writing on 
the wall with the bayonet point. 

You do get the red, living phrases, don't 
you, Private Atkins ? " The hottest thing in 
South Africa was frost-bitten compared with 
what's going on here." " The Boer War was 
a mothers' meeting beside this affair." " An- 
other shell dropped at me and I went like Tod 
Sloan." " Did you see that German man's 
face when I told him about our victories ? 
Poor devil ! He opened his mouth like a 
letter-box." No, Thomas, you may not be a 
scribe, but you " get there," especially when 
the order comes, " All rifles loaded and handy 
by your side ! " 

" It's hard, but it's good," is how you sum 
up your campaigning, and there goes a bottom 
truth. " You can't," as you say, " expect a 
six-course dinner on active service," but you 
would break your heart to be out of it all. 
" When I am in the thick of the fire a strange 
feeling comes over me. I feel and see no 
danger — I think it is the fighting blood of my 

52 



BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 

forefathers." Yes, and when you receive a 
rifle bullet through the arm or leg it feels " a 
bit of a sting," nothing more, " like a sharp 
needle going into me, but shrapnel hurts — 
hurts pretty badly." You are not, however, 
going to let mother, wife, or sweetheart know 
this, because it would worry them. 

You dread to tell them that " when the 
bullet went in my leg the main artery was 
severed, and they are going to take part of it 
off and leave me a cripple for life." Still 
harder is it to write : "I am wounded, and 
do not hope to live ; I am going and so cannot 
come home as I hoped ; I send all my love." 
And then there is an echo of infinity and immor- 
tality in the thought, " When a fellow gets 
shot you never think he is gone, but that he 
will come back." Some one softly starts sing- 
ing " Nearer, my God, to Thee," and it runs 
sweetly along the ranks, the muffled prayer of 
inextinguishable hearts for a soul in flight. 

But " Black Marias " and " Jack Johnsons " 
and " coal-boxes," as you call the enemy's 
howitzer shells, are driving along, and you 
accept them with your usual Atkins philosophy. 
The gun you know as " Aunt Sally " is flopping 

S3 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

her big shells at you ; " Calamity Jane " salutes 
you in odd volumes from miles away, and 
" Belching Billy " chimes in now and then. 
" Whistling Rufus," whose shells are smaller, 
is also in the turmoil, but, being without 
fear of the big brethren, you merely have a 
contempt for him. 

Still, the whole roar keeps you from the 
hour's sleep you are entitled to snatch, and 
therefore you gently swear at the Kaiser as 
" William the Weed," nickname Von Kluck 
" Old Von o'Clock," and grimly subscribe to 
the Uhlans as " Ewe-lambs." Always you 
remain the good sportsman, saying, " Put me 
a shilling on Gravelotte for the Cesarewitch, 
if this letter is in time " ; or, " Fancy Robins 
drawing the Palace I — I. Cheers ! " 

What was it you said when the doctor was 
bandaging your shattered knee ? That you 
wouldn't be able to play for Maidstone United 
at Christmas ! You had forgotten the remark. 
Possibly you had also forgotten that four of 
you, and rather " bad cases," enjoyed " nap " 
on the top of a Red Cross motor-lorry, all the 
way to the hospital. One of you contained 
six bullets, and he said on the operating-table, 

54 



BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 

" There will be enough to make the missus a 
pair of earrings." Another of you, a big 
Highlander, had pleaded not to be taken from 
the firing line because, " I have still some shots 
left and I can do something with them." 
" Keep smiling " is your motto ; " there's only- 
one winner in this game — roll on, England." 

Your gay bravery, your simple tenderness, 
and your fine humour make an epic, Thomas 
Atkins, and it is you yourself who write it, 
all unknowingly. " Tell mother I'm all Sir 
Garnet, Ai." " How is little Dick? Give 
him a kiss. He must be a great man in this 
long while. Love to the old lady and write 
soon " ; and then, " I am wading in blood ! " 
" Irene's prayer-book is always with me, 
although it upsets me to think of her saying 
her little prayers for me. I have got some 
French slippers for the children, which I hope 
to be able to bring to England. They are 
very quaint — Bon jour ! " " I parted with 
my badge to a little Belgian girl who, with her 
mother, was giving our boys milk to drink. 
She was just like Dora, and was wildly delighted 
to get such a souvenir." " If you have not sold 
Nigger I should like to have a photo of him 

55 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

and the two boys, or Jack and the dog, to 
show some of my chums." Thinking tenderly 
of home ! 

With tenderness, Private Atkins, you have 
chivalry ; or, as you would put it yourself, 
you " know how to behave towards a woman." 
" The Red Cross girleens, with their purty 
faces and their sweet ways, are as good men 
as most of us, and better than some of us. 
They are not supposed to venture into the 
firing line, but they get there all the same, 
and devil the one of us durst turn them away." 
Of course not, my Irish soldier, and maybe it 
was you who plucked the grapes that a French 
maiden couldn't reach, and had the surprise and 
confusion of your life, when in thanks, she kissed 
you on both cheeks. She knew, with the woman's 
instinct, that she could fire your chivalry and 
still trust it. " Tres correct " is the universal 
tribute you get in France, and it is a tribute 
to wear under your medals, next to your 
heart — a Legion of Honour for the gentleman 
you are. 

You have given your French friends another 
true taste of yourself in your high spirits, your 
jollity, your manifestation that the merry 

56 



BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 

heart goes all the day. You have the gift of 
wonder, which means imagination, and occa- 
sions for exercising it, as when the concussion 
of a shell flung you up into a tree, and your 
sergeant, missing you and looking around, 
asked, in military language, where you had 
gone ! You came down to tell him and 
couldn't, and thereupon the wonder of the 
thing seized him also. That incident was of 
the drawbridge order which links tragedy and 
humour, for they march together, even on the 
battlefield with you. Serious, nay, grave things 
may be framing you about, but your eye never 
misses the rift of humour, and that is good. 

There was a shell which lighted on a field 
kitchen while the master cook was stirring the 
dinner. It was a near shave for him, but, as 
he did escape, you mostly recall his rueful 
appearance as he gathered himself out of the 
scattered soup. Another of our vignettes is 
of some cows getting into the battle arena, 
and of half a dozen infantrymen calmly milking 
them. " Early doors this way ; early doors, 
ninepence ! " you once cried for slogan in a 
hard charge. When the German searchlights 
fell on you for the first time, your comment 

57 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

was, " Why, Bill, it's just like a play and us in 
the limelight." It was the Irish element in 
you which shouted, " Look at thim divils 
retraitin' with their backs facin' us," adding, 
about a lucky shamrock supposed to have been 
given to the Kaiser by somebody, " Sure, 
Hinissey, and there'll be a leaf apiece for us 
when we get to Berlin." 

Your philosophy, Private Atkins, cannot be 
upset even when a shrapnel bullet knocks a 
few inches out of your arm. No ; your lament 
is that it carries away a tattooed butterfly of 
which you were very proud. You date your 
letters from the " Hotel de la Openaires, Rue 
de Grassies, bed most comfortable and all 
arrangements up-to-date." You have your 
little joke all the time, and so when you meet 
the Foot Guards on a Sunday you ask them 
which band is playing in the Park ? Now and 
then the joke is against you, but you only 
enjoy it all the more,which is the final testimony 
that you are a true humorist. 

Perhaps if the joke singles you out over- 
much you go " all the colours of the rainbow," 
a lovable thing, because it reveals your modesty. 
Otherwise you are always in your element, be 

58 



BLOW! BUGLES! BLOW! 

the field tented white or stricken red. You 
are the complete knight in khaki, self-respect- 
ing, proud of your regiment, a lion-rampant 
of bravery and resolution, tender-hearted for 
all suffering ; and we shall not forget your 
simple request, " Think kind of a soldier ! " 
How could we when we know that you have 
a greater song than " Tipperary," although 
you only sing it silently to yourselves in the 
dark watches of the night : 

A little I'm hurt, but not yet slain; 
I'll but lie down and bleed awhile^ 
And then I'll rise and fight again. 



59 



IX. BEYOND THE FIRING LINE 

Yes, Brussels, the ravished capital of gallant 
little Belgium, lies beyond the firing line, lost 
in the fog of war. the Germans have their 
mailed hoof upon it, for a time, and we can 
only imagine its daily life. Seeking to do 
that, one recalls and re-constructs a visit 
paid to Brussels, not long before the war, in 
search of the place where the famous Waterloo 
Ball took place. 



SOMEWHERE, Christmas 1914. 

HAVE you ever made a little pilgrimage 
for the purpose of settling something 
which interests you personally ? That gives 
quickening to travel, a sense of achievement, 
makes a journey among new scenes and people 
doubly good. 

If you can find a loophole of entrance to a 
garden of history, you enter with all the 
charm of secrecy. It may be the history of 
literature or of war, or, with great luck, it 
may combine the two, as in this affair. 

Thomas Hardy says, in his great panoramic 
poem The Dynasts, that the spot where the 
Waterloo Ball was danced is as phantasmal in 
its elusiveness as towered Camelot, the palace 
of Priam, or the Hill of Calvary. He thinks 
the absolute site of the ball has yet to be 
proved, and wonders that Byron, writing only 
a year after the event, and in communication 
with people who were present, should have 
put it in the Hotel de Ville. 

63 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

By implication Byron does so, for his lines 
in Childe Harold — " Within a windowed niche 
of that high hall, Sate Brunswick's fated 
chieftain " — well describe a room in the Hotel 
de Ville. Sir William Fraser, who has almost 
made the problem a quest, tells us that Byron, 
when in Brussels in the year 1816, was shown 
the " high hall " of the Hotel de Ville. He 
may have assumed that here was danced the 
Duchess of Richmond's ball, or he may just 
have found its aspect suitable for his glowing 
pen. But you will search Childe Harold 
through, and, Mr. John Murray, a complete 
Byron authority, assures me, all the poet's 
papers, without finding any actual, definite 
mention of the Hotel de Ville, and at that 
we come on a new light. 

Mr. Murray's father published in 1859 an 
edition of Childe Harold, with fine engravings 
to illustrate the scenes of the poem. Naturally, 
there must be a picture to set into the flowing 
verses descriptive of the ball : 

There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then 

Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright 

The lamps shone on fair women and brave men ; 

64 



BEYOND THE FIRING LINE 

A thousand hearts beat happily, and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 

Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell. 

Well, an artist thinks first of an effective 
picture, and here he applied Byron to the 
Hotel de Ville, and both to the further lines : 

And there was mounting in hot haste ; the steed, 
The mustering squadron and the clattering car, 

Went pouring forth with impetuous speed 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war. 

Can there be any doubt that this plate, 
" sketched by Percival Skelton, etched by 
J. Cooper " — they should have their due of 
resource — is the thing which definitely gave 
a name to the Hotel de Ville as Byron's scene 
of the ball ? You see in it the beautiful 
building, with its spidery columns and its 
elegant leap upwards, almost as truly as if 
you were dreaming an hour away beside it in 
the Market Square, as I did. It presents the 
coming of dawn, though the lights still glow 
from the mullioned windows, and the " panoply 
of war " is setting out for Waterloo, where the 
map of Europe was to be re-made. 

Clearly, what we have then is a case of artistic 

F 65 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

licence added to poetic licence, and so a mis- 
understanding which became traditional. But 
English researchers in Brussels knew that the 
ball was held elsewhere, only where ? Under 
what roof did the Iron Duke and the Duke of 
the Black Brunswickers talk when they heard 
that Napoleon had crossed the Sambre ? 
What ceiling, vaulted or not, heard the Spirit 
of the Years in Hardy's Dynasts whisper, as 
with a cold shudder of the grave : 

O Brunswick, Duke of Death wounds ! Even as he 
For whom thou wear'st that filial weedery 
Was waylaid by my tipstaff nine years since, 
So thou this day shalt feel his fendless tap 
And join thy Sire ! 

You go to Brussels to pursue, but you must 
take your clues from London, the depository 
of most keys to English history. The genuine 
clue to the Waterloo ballroom came from 
a daughter of the Duchess of Richmond, 
Georgiana Lennox, Lady de Ros, whose recol- 
lections of the Duke of Wellington and other 
reminiscences John Murray published a full 
score years ago. 

She had, as a young woman, been at the 
ball, talked with the Duke of Wellington and 

66 



BEYOND THE FIRING LINE 

the other high notables, danced with the 
officers as young as herself, and seen the gay- 
assembly melt away to the sound of the war 
drum at the door of a house in the Rue de la 
Blanchisserie. The Duchess of Richmond had 
hired a house there, for many English families 
were in Brussels just before Waterloo, in order 
to be near their relatives in the army. 

This house belonged to a coach-builder, and 
according to Lady de Ros the ball actually 
took place in a large apartment on the ground- 
floor which her sisters used as a schoolroom. 
She remembered, as a woman would remember, 
that it had a paper of a trellis pattern with 
roses. Perhaps those roses came to hurt, 
because the daughters of the house were wont, 
on a wet day — and it can rain ardently in 
Brussels — to play shuttlecock in the room. 

Here was the Waterloo ballroom given a 
definite local name and habitation, but, added 
Lady de Ros, the house had disappeared. Sir 
William Fraser, however, soon found it at 
40 and 42, Rue de la Blanchisserie, and his 
inquiries had another result. 

He came to the conclusion that there could 
have been no ball of two or three hundred 
6 7 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

people in any apartment of the actual house 
occupied by the Duchess of Richmond. But, 
as part of the whole buildings lying between 
the Rue de la Blanchisserie and the Rue de 
Cendres, streets backing towards each other, 
he found a large barn-like, pillared room, and 
he at once decided that it was the true spot 
of the Waterloo Ball. 

Nay, it agreed with the description given 
by Lady de Ros ; and how had it been lost 
sight of all down the years following the 
battle ? That was easy to understand. The 
old coach warehouse, for such it was, had been 
let to new tenants in succession, and had 
gradually lost its identity. 

All this gathered light brings you as near 
as we shall ever get to the dancing floor of 
the Waterloo Ball ; and I felt, as I walked up 
the Rue de la Blanchisserie, that it was enough. 
You know instinctively when you have come 
to the right end of a pilgrimage, after following 
all its stream-like windings, and I had that 
feeling. 

A few minutes before I had been skirting 
the invitingly green Botanical Gardens of 
Brussels. Then I turned down the boulevard 
68 



BEYOND THE FIRING LINE 

into New Street, where the plump women of 
Brussels sun themselves of an afternoon and 
buy gloves only, if they be in an economical 
mood. Next I took a turn to the left, and 
struck up the almost lane-like Rue de la 
Blanchisserie, which keeps an old-world ap- 
pearance, although the laundry that begot its 
name is no longer to be seen. It has no 
architectural note, unless it be a daub of 
Flemish yellow ochre, and probably it pre- 
sented to me very much the same face as it 
did on June 15, 1815, when Englishmen danced 
before they went forth to die, some of them 
without even changing their pumps. 

You apply the test of local knowledge, and I 
first did so with an intelligent man who came 
out of the yard beside my fated little house. 

" Why, certainly," said he, " the ball was 
in a big chamber behind, towards the hospital 
of the Augustian Sisters which fronts the Rue 
des Cendres." 

Similarly, when I rang their clanging bell, 
and a sympathetic door opened widely, I was 
pointed to a detached apartment lying towards 
the Rue de la Blanchisserie. The Duchess of 
Richmond — a Gordon who liked to be gay — 

69 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

had welcomed her friends hospitably in her 
villa, and hired and fitted up the coach- 
builder's warehouse in which they might dance. 
What more natural arrangement could you ask 
for ? 

Yes, you are pretty safe to colour this little 
corner of Old Brussels with Wellington call- 
ing for a map from the Duke of Richmond's 
study, placing his finger on Waterloo, and 
saying, " The battle will be fought there." 



70 



X. THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE 

The Prussians in possession— for a little while — 
of the Field of Waterloo, where their Marshal 
Blucher came to complete the rout of Napoleon ! 
Perhaps, when all things are assessed, a seed 
of the Prussian militarism which made Arma- 
geddon will be found to have bloomed there. 
The thought sends one's mind back on a 
pilgrimage to the most famous, because the 
most fated, battlefield of a 



SOMEWHERE, New Year 191 4. 

TO see the Field of Waterloo is like having 
a familiar page of history become your 
own. What was merely impersonal, a happen- 
ing in the distance, takes an intimate aspect. 
It is a dream arrived, a story which leaps into 
the fact of presence and colour. 

You are a part of the picture, however 
small, and that has a peculiar influence on the 
mind. It flatters you to think that you are 
where Napoleon and Wellington fought, with 
history waiting on them. You can, if you 
listen with the ear of imagination, hear the 
voices of the captains, the shouting of the 
men, the toss and rumble of war. Yes, you 
are privileged. 

Your feeling when you walk the earth of 
Waterloo is one of quiet solemnity touched 
with surprise. It is a place made holy by 
the passing of many a gallant spirit, and that 
incense is about you. Your foot breaks the 

73 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

grass where the dust of a Scots Grey may 
mingle with that of a Napoleonic Old Guard. 
You lift it quickly, lest it disturb their long 
sleep beneath the coverlet of gowans which 
star-spangles the grass. 

Mother Nature, the infinite nurse of peace, 
has healed Waterloo, but she has not changed 
the lie of the land, nor added an acre to its 
size, and that is where surprise arises, almost 
with a violence. A steel-plate of history has 
turned human for you, and naturally enough 
you apply a living image to a landscape, asking, 
in the lines about Helen of Troy : 

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium ? 

It is a very small field of battle to have so 
much happen on it, a field which you can 
wander over and round in a short forenoon. 
Suppose a plain which runs away steadily, 
imperceptibly, from your eye until, in any 
direction, you simply lose it on the skyline. 
It consists of farm-land and pasturage, with 
red brick houses dotting it, some old and 
weary, others newer and larger. A summer 
greenness of grass, or crops, or trees, is the 

74 



THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE 

colour that spreads before you, much as it 
would have spread in June 1815. 

You slowly reduce that stretch of country, 
and come to an inner circle of confronting 
ridges, although they are not quite defined. 
Each is like a bent bow, or may be called that, 
and in length each is roughly two miles. 
Well, on the ridge nearest Brussels, dominated 
by the village of Waterloo, Wellington had 
his men in battle array. On the opposite 
ridge, or half-circle, was Napoleon's army, 
with the farm of Belle Alliance for centre, 
and the woods of Chantelet for background. 

You can get an easy grip of the situation if 
you ascend the memorial mound which the 
Allies who fought at Waterloo erected. There 
are more than 200 steps to take, but they are 
labour well spent when you reach the top, 
where a Belgian lion keeps watch and ward. 
He cuts a far bigger figure than Belgium did 
at Waterloo, but then everybody won it, 
including Bill Adams. 

Anyhow, the lash of his tail in no way 
disturbs your study of the scene below, and 
to yourself you exclaim, " How very close to 
each other were the staffs of Napoleon and 

75 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Wellington — one at Belle Alliance, the other 
up below the village of Waterloo. Why, it 
must be less than three hundred yards ! " 
Exactly ; and there you have proof of how 
very near a thing this battle of the ages was 
in hand-grips. If there had been a cinema- 
man on a suitable height, he could have 
gathered in the whole picture, unless, indeed, 
the smoke made by the old powder used in 
cannon and flint-lock had prevented him. 

There would have been little of it in the 
air when Napoleon, while the armies were 
taking ground in the early morning, rode up 
an eminence to the rear-right of Hougoumont. 
There he could see the battle that was to be, 
with that vision which was half his genius. 
Still earlier he had been about in other parts, 
compelling a local farmer to guide him, and 
it was then he said, " Ah, those English, I 
have them now." 

He had thought that, like the Arabs, they 
might steal away in the night ; or had he 
really ? At all events, for a second time he 
made comments on the enemy to his staff, 
he being the one instance of a talkative super- 
man. " How steadily these troops form up," 

7 6 



THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE 

he said, moving his glass from his eye and 
pointing to some of Wellington's men. " Ob- 
serve those grey horses ; are they not a noble 
spectacle ; yet in half an hour I shall cut 
them to pieces ! " Instead, the Scots Greys 
rode down the flower of his army, crying to 
the companion Gordons, " Scotland for ever ! " 

It is almost uncanny to search out, as you 
can do with a good map, the places where 
Napoleon was at various stages of the battle. 
Three positions on the raised edges of the 
Charleroy Road certainly knew him in succes- 
sion ; about ten o'clock, when the fight was 
ardent ; at three, when it was still undecided ; 
and at seven, when his hour was striking. 
You fill your eye of imagination with him, a 
short, corpulent figure on a white horse, not 
picturesque, but masterfully impressive, throw- 
ing a glance one way, a word another, domi- 
nating every one about him by sheer personality. 

You feel that he was, to the French, a war- 
god who scarce had to nod, and that he fought 
Wellington's army rather than Wellington. 
Or this might be put in the other way that 
Napoleon generalled with all the sparkle and 
drama of genius, while Wellington generalled 

11 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

to win, on the principle of refusing to be 
beaten. 

So it is that Napoleon remains the haunting 
spirit of that field to the visitor who, though 
shown a dip where Wellington is supposed to 
have exclaimed, " Up Guards, and at them ! " 
wonders if he ever did, the thing being alien 
to him. A master of detail, who kept his 
men fit on a long march by resting them ten 
minutes every hour, played not at all to the 
gallery, even the clamorous gallery of Waterloo. 

Its Mecca is the Chateau of Hougoumont, 
or, as it was also called, Goumont, on which 
the right wing of the British lay. " Take it," 
said Napoleon to himself, in so many words, 
" and I have them enfiladed, and I likewise 
put a pistol at the head of Blucher coming 
by Wavre to their help." You cannot, stand- 
ing on the spot, miss his tactics and strategy, 
so simple, so bold, with their alternative effort 
to break Wellington's centre at the farm of 
La Haie Sainte, when the afternoon came, and 
Hougoumont still held out. 

Waterloo was lost and won within the four 
acres or so which formed the grounds of the 
Hougoumont chateau. It was riddled by 

78 



THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE 

artillery, burned by fire, reduced to a state 
of carnage in bricks as well as in human life. 
But enough of it remains to let you under- 
stand how the tide of war rose and fell within 
those wondrous walls. 

Put your head through one of the old loop- 
holes, as eager Coldstreamers probably did, 
and you draw it back quickly, lest, as you feel, 
it be lost. Lean over the rickety fence which 
encloses the well that gave the chateau water. 
The thirsty British drew buckets of drink 
from that well until the bodies of the slain 
choked it up. Sit down on the nearest 
mound of grassy earth, and look at the gate- 
way which the French battered but could 
not win. Here was the very lust of battle, 
and though time has purified the atmosphere 
almost to pathos, somehow it still harbours a 
personal touch of the deeds done. 

You feel the human note through all your 
impressions of Waterloo, but it is most abiding 
at Hougoumont, most solemn, most alluring 
to the senses. Hougoumont was Waterloo, 
and its grey ruins whisper that as you leave 
them in their sequestered peace, on the 
Cockpit of Europe. 

79 



XL LONDON WAR PICTURES 

They have filled its parks and, its streets ', scenes, 
big and little, such as London may never have 
again, for, happily, Armageddon only comes 
once. Therefore it may be well to have some 
of them jotted down, with Hyde Park for the 
picture from which others radiate. If you 
possess the seeing eye you will have made 
your own gallery, but never mind that. 



SOMEWHERE, January 19 15. 

WHEN, with the turn of the year, the 
sap begins to rise, the swords of the 
warriors begin to stir in their scabbards ! It 
is a saying as old and as general as war itself, 
and, like most old sayings, it bespeaks a 
primitive truth. To apply it to Hyde Park, 
however, is to give it a fresh, perhaps an 
unexpected, setting. 

A Happy Valley hides there, where the flicker- 
ing winter sun comes early and lingers late. 
In that Dale-Without-a-Name you behold the 
first movements of spring in the womb of 
Nature. You turn softly away, not to disturb 
Mother Earth in her nurturing, and you meet 
men marching and drilling for war. Yes, the 
spring of the new, great campaign which will 
reconstruct Europe for a hundred years, is 
showing itself in London. 

It is a thing of feeling more than of eyesight, 
but it is there, and it will grow as the days 

83 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

lengthen and the sun strengthens, ripening 
everything, even war, to a conclusion, however 
distant that may be. Before the zenith is 
reached, before the grand and awful last 
curtain falls, let us gather together a few 
individual war pictures, such as we have grown 
familiar with in London. 

Perhaps you have walked through the Green 
Park, from Buckingham Palace to Piccadilly, 
on a morning when the sky-line above the 
flying horses of Constitution Hill, was a web 
of dismal cloud. War bellowed from that 
sky-scape, to the nearer picture of bare trees 
and green grass in which soldiers were picketed 
with their horses. Possibly you noticed, as 
you walked, an artist sketching that picture, 
and maybe you even slyly glanced at his canvas, 
marvelling how wonderfully well he had caught 
it all, this war London of sky and earth. 

Necessarily it included a ragamuffin Boy 
Scout, the sort of little fellow whom the war 
has made a greater hero than ever to himself. 
Before, he was content to uniform himself in 
a very primitive way with newspapers wound 
round his breast and green twigs stuck in his cap. 
Now he helmets himself with a bully-beef tin, 

8 4 



LONDON WAR PICTURES 

winds a piece of coloured cloth around his waist 
for an officer's belt, and makes very weather- 
proof puttees of fragments of brown paper. 

He is a dear little fellow, this ragamuffin 
Scout, who is all " on his own," holding no 
commission from anybody but himself and his 
comrades. He digs trenches, and he puts the 
other fellow into them while he keeps watch 
and ward, or rushes from tree to tree, spying 
out the advancing Germans ! He even uses 
his little sister, who has attended to look on 
the fun, as a decoy, which is a little ungallant. 
But, like a complete hero, he conquers in time 
to save her from the urgent perils with which 
she comes to be besieged. Perhaps he says 
to himself that some time, if the war lasts long 
enough, he will actually win a V.C. on the 
greensward of Germany instead of the Green 
Park of London. 

You have another London war picture in 
the ragamuffin man who sells toys on the 
street, or, if the weather be very bad and people 
are kept indoors, does not sell them. Some- 
how he is never very interesting in himself, 
being a person of sadness whom, in imagination, 
you see crawling into a cubicle at Rowton 

85 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

House when his day's work is over. His war 
" wheezes " are interesting, however, and they 
are so cheap that for a few coppers you can buy 
samples of them all. What strikes you about 
them generally is their good nature towards the 
enemy. The Kaiser is made into an ugly Blue- 
Beard man, and into many other images, but 
he is never savagely treated. He is the villain 
of the kerbstone toys, but they have nothing 
offensive in them ; they remain in essence toys, 
humorous things, laughable things. They 
avoid " frightfulness," though German methods 
might have persuaded them to such ways. 

" Sharp your razor on the Kaiser," is the 
invitation of one toy, but somehow there are 
not very many buyers for it. It seems too 
obvious a kind of cry, that, to attract anybody. 
To tell the truth, originality does not appear 
to be very prevalent among the war toys, 
possibly because the people who support this 
sort of market are filled with more serious war 
thoughts than toys and their vendors. One 
thinks of the cheap war toy as a street cartoon, 
but this time it has not shown much genius — 
very little, indeed, compared with the wonder- 
ful jugs and other creations which made quite 

86 



LONDON WAR PICTURES 

a crop in the days of " Boney," and which are 
still collected by people who like relics. 

Another war picture that nestles near the 
heart of one who knows the Scottish heather 
hills, is the perpetual wonder which the kilt 
excites in London. It is one of the oldest 
dresses in the world, but it seems always to 
be curiously fresh to the Londoner. The grey 
cloth which the London Scottish wear has 
none of the colour and splendour of the High- 
land clan tartans, not is it always so well cut 
as it might be, and therefore it does not hang 
with a due harmony. Not every man has the 
born figure for a kilt, for there is a born figure ; 
but, even so, the kilted soldiers of London are 
heroes wherever they go. 

It is the kilt that does it. Why is this, and 
why, after these centuries of wear, does it 
remain so freshly attractive to the crowd in 
London ? Partly it is because that crowd does 
not see it every day, partly because it stands 
for the military traditions of Highland Scot- 
land, partly because of its associations with 
some of the most famous regiments of the 
British Army, and partly because it is, in 
itself, a most handsome dress, suggestive of the 

87 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

swing and splendour of war. Yes, the kilt has 
an air of poetic mystery as well as of grace ; a 
coquettish trick, as of a dainty woman stepping 
across a ballroom floor on a neat foot and ankle. 

Probably your Londoner does not think of 
those things at all, and almost assuredly he 
could not tell you the history of the kilt. He 
does not know that it takes seven yards of 
good cloth to make a kilt, that the plaiting and 
the sewing of it form almost a bigger task than 
the manufacture of a suit, and that the result 
in gracefulness at the end of the day is ever 
something of a gamble. He does not know, 
either, that the kilt is, perhaps, the warmest 
uniform which a soldier can wear, and that in 
the trenches of the Peninsula, a hundred years 
ago, its wearers contributed few victims to 
rheumatism and cold, and the other ills which 
come from exposure. 

While it gives warmth, it gives freedom, and 
so it is an extraordinarily easy dress in which to 
walk. There is never the cramped, tired feeling 
which a soldier gets who is shut up over-long 
or marched too far in ordinary uniform. One 
might say that the kilted man goes all the day, 
while the trousered one tires in a mile. 

88 



XII. THE ROAD TO FRANCE 

Ah, how good to take the road to France, even 
if only to dip into that tried, beloved land, for 
a brief day or two ! One can always return 
to it, although we live in a period of pass- 
ports, alien things to the true traveller. 'They 
may be read about, as incidental to the Grand 
Tour of old, and to-day they have returned, 
under the stress of war, making travel different. 



SOMEWHERE, February 1915. 

Fair stood the wind for France 
As we our sails advance ! 

IT is a thought to travel to France amid the 
spindrift of war, and, anyhow, it is good 
to begin a day with a story of laughter. 

My Highlander friend had settled himself 
and his kilt in a corner seat of the train at 
Victoria, and I sat opposite to him. We had 
got through the formalities of departure, 
without feeling that we were in any way 
outraged as citizens, and so there was no 
grumble on that score. One might say, 
applying a fine, familiar passage, that behind 
the frowning countenance of search, and all 
the rest of it, at Victoria, there hides a smiling 
face. 

" Yes," said the war-bent Highlander, " it's 

one of the prettiest stories I have heard for a 

long time, and it's new, and it fits our mood, 

because it has a French touch. Two nice, 

9 1 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

fresh-faced ' Scottie ' Territorials from the 
far, far north, were airing themselves the other 
afternoon on a London 'bus. On the front 
seat, also seeing London, sat a young girl, 
clearly French by the cut of her hat and the 
trimness of her outline. ' H'm, isn't she 
bonnie ? ' said one of the Scotties. ' Gran',' 
said the other. ' Dinna' ye think,' said the 
first, ' we might just edge up her way a bittie ? ' 
e Aye,' quoth the second ; ' but wait a wee ; 
she hasna' paid her fare yet ! ' " 

It took us, that sweet setting of the old 
untruth about Scotsmen, blithely down Kent 
to Folkestone, where there was a Channel 
drizzle. We were nearly all men, for women, 
wisely enough, perhaps, are staying at home, 
and the khaki of the army was the most preva- 
lent colour. One loves it for what it means, 
but it does not, in a crowd passing on to a 
Channel steamer, make the variety of colour 
which you get from women's frocks. The 
military face, too, framed in its peak-cap, has 
not the mystery, the charming surprise, the 
greeting, that a woman's hat may shelter. 

More strict inspection of passports ; but 
then in war-time you travel according to 

92 



THE ROAD TO FRANCE 

Stevenson's motto, that it is better to travel 
hopefully than to arrive, and so you are not 
really worried. You accept it all as part of 
the great doings of the age, and if it be your 
only share in them,, why, you are not doing 
much. Should we see a German submarine 
between the time we shot out from England 
into the dim haze, on an oily sea, and the time 
we came to French shores at Boulogne ? 

Perhaps there wasn't anybody on board 
who didn't wonder the question, but I heard 
nobody say it. It was a question taken for 
granted, and there was no more concern about 
it than that. We saw no German submarine ; 
nothing but the grey, hawk-like forms of 
torpedo-boats, which we knew to be friends 
on watch, and the tramp steamers which 
continue to go down into our great waters, 
as if there were no submarines flying the 
Prussian eagle with its blood-red beak. 

At Boulogne it rained sullenly, and officers 
who were returning to the fighting line from 
" short leave " in England, said to each other 
that the mud would be deep again in the 
trenches of Flanders. Somehow, when you 
heard that, you instinctively looked north- 

93 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

ward in search of the firing line, a mere motor 
ride distant ; but, of course, you only saw the 
quaint, scattered town of Boulogne, now more 
British than ever. We are really " it " ; we 
seem to be managing it ; to begin our posses- 
sion on the quay and to extend ourselves 
everywhere. 

There is khaki, khaki, all the way in Boulogne, 
relieved by scattered French uniforms, each 
more resplendent than khaki, but they almost 
strike you as the intruders. If Napoleon could 
only arise from his tomb he would marvel at 
the glorious revenge which perfidious England 
is having, a hundred and more years after, 
over the grand army which he assembled at 
Boulogne for our invasion. How the looms 
of time do disarray the pet ambitions of the 
great ones ! 

At Boulogne you are on the skirts of the 
war area, and the civilian train may have to 
await orders and then go slow, at all events 
until Amiens is reached. You cover ground 
from which the Germans were rolled back, 
and the gladness of Nature in France is blotting 
out the Hun-like marks of their feet. Possibly, 
if you could find a German hoof-hole as it 

94 



THE ROAD TO FRANCE 

was made, the beast in it would still be trace- 
able. But Nature is kindly, and the eager, 
strenuous French have been helping her in 
their best measure to wipe out the stains of 
the visitation. 

Troop trains and hospital trains pass, or are 
passed in sidings, and French soldiers, alert 
and fit and happy, are everywhere. At some 
station a general, with one or two officers in 
attendance, will join the train, leaving it at 
another station. Girl collectors for the French 
Red Cross enter the coaches, and the passengers 
rattle coins into their tin boxes. One girl, 
the prettiest visitor of the journey, was gather- 
ing so wealthily from a bunch of British naval 
officers that the train nearly carried her away 
with them. Gallant gentlemen, how they 
sorrowed ; but she blew them something very 
much resembling a kiss. 

They could not have admired her more than 
they did the sweet English girls who were 
running a " buffet " — so he calls it ! — for 
Thomas Atkins at Boulogne, only — it is well 
to be accurate in these matters — they did not 
admire her less. She knew it, and — she blew 
that kiss ; remembering, may be, the insurance 
95 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

of our old song, " ' There's safety in numbers,' 
says Rory O'More." 

So goes a railway journey across Picardy 
to France in war-time, not gladly in the old 
sense, and not as swiftly, but with a wonderful, 
new, original, human interest. You travel, 
don't forget, with war for companion, as you 
realise when you see the tower of Amiens 
Cathedral still cleaving the sky, though the 
Germans shot at it, or again when you come 
to the Oise, and the train slows up, almost 
with a jerk. This because the stone bridge 
it formerly crossed was blown up, has not yet 
been rebuilt, and meanwhile needs a wooden 
one for substitute. Over it a heavy train 
must go slowly, for it would be no treat 
to strain its timbers unduly and fall into the 
yellow murky waters below. 

By this time Paris is drawing near, like the 
night, and she greets you, not in her traditional 
rosy, lightsome fashion, but in the heavy 
trappings of war. She lives now not the joy 
of life, but to fight and conquer, and, if such 
be the beacon of her half-darkness, surely it 
is the greatest flame of light she has ever 
shown. You read that message clear as you 

9 6 



THE ROAD TO FRANCE 

speed among the shadows of the old familiar 
street faces, to the hotel named after the kingly 
Englishman whom all France this day holds 
in reverence for what he was to it, and what 
he did for the New World which is dawning. 



97 



XIII. AS THE FRENCH SEE US 

" Oh wad some power the giftie gie us" says 
Robert Burns, " To see oursels as others see 
us!" Since Armageddon began the French 
have seen us more kindly, more admiringly, 
perhaps, than we have seen ourselves. They 
have looked to us confidently, as we have 
looked to them, but direct intercourse is good 
for Allies, as a record in that purport will 
illustrate. 



SOMEWHERE, February 1915. 

THE tug of war brings out sharply, clearly, 
naturally, the real feelings that exist 
between peoples, and that is one thing to be 
set against its terribleness. It lets you know 
your friends, why you and they are friends, 
and what the strands of friendship are that 
unite you. Mere forms of intercourse are 
rent aside, as if by a mighty wind, and you 
stand before each other just as you are, truth- 
say ers. Revelation may not have come in all 
things, but it is there for the discovery. 

Perhaps that indicates well enough the 
personal estimate you get from a visit to France 
in Armageddon. It is an impression rather 
than a fact, because you cannot bunch the 
spiritual side of a great crisis into a parcel and 
label it. You merely feel the tingle of some 
of its nerves, and somebody else might feel 
others, different, but with the same message 
as between heart and heart and head and head. 
101 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

In war, as in love, the " heart's aye the part 
aye, that makes us right or wrong," but the 
head is also vital. 

At Armageddon an Englishman, however 
humble, finds himself a guest of honour among 
the French people. Nothing is too good for 
him, nothing too kind to say of the part 
England has played in the war. But the 
French are the most mental, the most logical 
people in the world, or how otherwise could 
they have done so much for art, knowledge, 
all that makes civilisation ? Therefore they 
" want to know," and when they have said 
the sincere things which are first with them, 
they ask others. 

At all events this was what happened when 
Monsieur Maison, Monsieur Vin, and Monsieur 
Barbe greeted me. A friend in London had 
given me a warm letter to Monsieur Maison, a 
charming man of large affairs in Paris. They 
were put aside when war broke out and the 
rally sounded. He leapt into his uniform as a 
full private, and to-day manages a business end 
of things military in Paris. " If," he had said to 
himself, " this friendly Englishman really wants 
to know what we in France are thinking, why, 
102 



AS THE FRENCH SEE US 

I must get one or two representative folk to 
meet him." So he called up Monsieur Vin, 
the Paris partner of a big Bordeaux house, and 
Monsieur Barbe from round the corner, where 
he was still plying shears and razor. 

" Of course," said Monsieur Maison, " every- 
body in France is satisfied about one thing, 
victory. It is not yet, but it has been made 
sure, and it will come. How soon, how late," 
he added, " we cannot tell, but it is secure." 
He turned, with his nice, black, manly eyes 
to Monsieur Vin and to Monsieur Barbe, and 
they nodded. 

" Next," said Monsieur Maison, " we are all 
determined that the victory shall be complete, 
that Prussian militarism, which is at the 
bottom of the trouble, shall be destroyed. We 
French have always been a martial people, 
but we are not a war-loving, war-making 
people. If we must fight for everything we 
hold dear, we fight our best, but ordinarily 
there is no more peaceful nation in the world 
than France. No thought, therefore, could 
be dearer to her than the thought that, when 
Prussian militarism expires, there may never, 
in all time to come, be another great war." 
103 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Meanwhile it was for France and England to 
fight the good fight, each in her own good way. 
National personality was the soul of victory — 
let it be free and flourish. 

" For example," quoth Monsieur Vin, who 
had a winsome resemblance to our own King 
Edward, " there was the especial British 
bravery of your great little army during the 
first months of the war. Not a heart in France, 
man's or woman's, but knows it and goes out 
to Monsieur Tommy, a surprisingly fine 
fellow. And there is your unmatched navy, 
which has kept the seas open and led in clearing 
the German flag from them. We understand, 
as we sit here in quiet, undisturbed talk, what 
all that has meant for us. We do not trumpet 
about it, and as our men-folk are at the front 
you may even think you do not hear enough 
appreciation of what your naval power has 
been in the war. But, truly, we understand, 
and when history is written these great things 
shall be made plain." 

Monsieur Barbe had barbered in England, 

had known English fairly well, and was glad 

to resume it ; so he took up the tale. " I go 

out among all peoples," he said, " ladies and 

104 



AS THE FRENCH SEE US 

gentlemen, and everywhere it is — victory ! I 
see ladies who have lost husbands, sweethearts, 
sons, and they have wept, heart-broken. But 
they weep no more — no, not if their hearts 
should break. Ah, they are heroines, who 
will make every sacrifice, all for the dear La 
Patrie and the grandeur of the common cause. 
Ah, what France owes to her women in this 
war, only one like myself, who actually sees, 
can tell. Splendid, splendid, sir ; there are 
no words for it. And it is the same, mind 
you, high and low ; a — what do you call it ? — 
hell of suffering, and a thousand Jeanne 
d'Arcs." 

Monsieur Barbe had given voice to the 
sentiments deep in Monsieur Maison and 
Monsieur Vin. You could gather that from 
the mist of softness which came into their 
eyes, causing them to look for signs on the 
ceiling of the room. But while French nature 
has a rich sentiment, it hates sentimentality, 
and loves to hold by the hard-and-fast anchors 
of life and conduct. It was no jolt, therefore, 
when Monsieur Vin, looking more than ever 
like " Edouard Sept," remarked, " But tell us 
about Kitchener's Army." 
105 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Everywhere in Paris the Englishman has 
that question put to him, not immediately, 
perhaps, but after a little, adroitly, in a charm- 
ing way, but always with a detectable anxiety 
behind it. 

Well, briefly, I told Monsieur Maison, Mon- 
sieur Vin, and Monsieur Barbe, about our 
Grand Army ; that it consists of the flower of 
British manhood in brain and body; that it 
has flocked to the standard of its own free 
will, anxious to strike for Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity ; that it is the greatest citizen 
army, the most eloquent expression of demo- 
cracy in arms the world has ever seen ; and 
that in this it will be marching not only step 
and step with France's incomparable army 
now in the field, but marching in the same 
thoughtful spirit and will to conquer. 

" Ah," said Monsieur Maison and Monsieur 
Vin and Monsieur Barbe, " so it is not a mob 
recruited from street corners. It is a people 
in arms, your best people, your professional 
men, and your hand-workers ! " Possibly they 
had feared a little, for immediately they also 
observed, " But how has it been possible with- 
out conscription ? " The answer was that the 
1 06 



AS THE FRENCH SEE US 

rising up of our Grand Army had veritably 
been the death-knell of the cry of conscription 
in England, because it had shown conscription 
to be unnecessary. 

"Yes," said Monsieur Maison ; "Yes," 
said Monsieur Vin ; " Yes," said Monsieur 
Barbe ; and we all understood each other. 



107 



XIV. LE ROI EDOUARD SEPT! 

He reigned and reigns in the heart of France, 
which honours his memory as it honoured him. 
You cannot, if you he British and in Paris, 
miss this very strong impression. It is more, 
it is a feeling, a conviction, borne in on you 
from every side. It is hard to put in words, 
but it should not escape them. 



SOMEWHERE, March 1915. 

THE King is dead, long live the King ! " 
You will find a new and touching 
version of that in Paris just now. There 
Edouard Sept, as the Parisians always called 
him, is a living presence. " He being dead, 
yet speaketh." 

Not only that, but his personality is the 
medium in which Paris thinks of London amid 
the tumult of Armageddon. His memory 
illumines us to the French people, and for him 
they give us their hearts. He is a pledge of 
which they are as proud as ourselves, for did 
he not understand the French and love France ? 
It wins them to be understood ; it conquers 
them to have affection. 

" You have never been to London," I said 
to a French lady whose drawing-room held a 
framed portrait of King Edward. " No," she 
said, " and I don't know if ever I shall see it 
now, for I grow old." Then she added, " But 
in 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

I dearly wanted to visit the capital of Edouard 
Sept," and she pointed to his portrait. " I 
suppose," she added, reflectively, " London 
will never be the same without him. Paris is 
not — it has an empty place." 

A well-known French man of letters, to 
whom I was speaking, put the same regard 
for King Edward in another way. The French 
saw in him the vital figure behind the Entente 
Cordiale, to-day in action against the Prussian 
dragon of militarism. He was the new St. 
George, whose lance remains quick and sure, 
though his own hand can no longer hold it. 
He was the knight of the years when France, 
being wooed by us, won herself as well, for the 
supreme events that are happening. 

It is all better than a legend, because it is 
all true, and the heart of France leaps to it. 
Edouard Sept and Merrie England ! That is 
how France goes to war beside us, and, ah ! if 
he could only return and ride along her em- 
battled line, what a royal progress that would 
be. It would be a Field of the Cloth of Gold 
such as the red thread of war has never woven 
in any web of victory. The French do not 
doubt that Edouard Sept would have made 

112 



LE ROI EDOUARD SEPT! 

the pilgrimage of their banners, they take it 
for granted. Their one thought would have 
been how to honour him enough for what he 
did and was, aye, and for what he remains to 
them. 

He was the King of England, and he adorned 
the throne, but he was also Edouard of France. 
He took his way across its fair face as one 
born to do so, neither he nor any other 
questioning the thing. He rejoiced, feeling 
wondrous happy, in the green graciousness of 
the French landscape and in the sunshine 
of her life. He had a soul for hers, the French 
fondly think, and that is why, in this hour of 
high reckoning, when Europe is being re-made 
for a century, as Napoleon re-made it a century 
ago, his living presence in France is equal to 
a second British Army. You fight a great 
war for a great cause with the weapons of the 
heart, the ammunition of ideals, as well as 
with steel cannon, and the French know it, 
better even, perhaps, than we do ; so they 
salute the shade of Edouard Sept. 

They talk of him not in the cold trappings 
of royalty and sovereignty, but in the warmth 
of manhood and womanhood, as one talks to 
i 113 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

a dear friend, here or departed. Some day, 
perhaps, there may come a brilliant book on 
King Edward in France, for one hears much 
personal chronicle of him, the little things, the 
revealing things, the things that really count 
because, being natural, they are the truth. 

There was that good incident at the Opera 
House, when he was leaving the gala perform- 
ance with Madame Loubet on his arm. His 
quick eye saw, among the brilliant crowd 
watching his departure, Madame Jeannie 
Granier, an old friend, to whose perfect art on 
the French stage he had often done homage. 
With a word of apology to Madame Loubet, he 
walked over to Madame Granier, shook her 
hand and wished her well. That simple, little 
act delighted every French man and every 
French woman who beheld it. Its frank 
chivalry personified the fine flower of French 
romance, and when King Edward drove away 
from the Opera House the captured heart 
of Paris, the sweetest cherub imaginable, went 
with him for escort. 

It consoled France, when King Edward 
died, that some of his last days were spent 
within her borders, at Biarritz. You may, in 
114 



LE ROI EDOUARD SEPT! 

Paris, at the present time of strain and emotion, 
both finely kept under control, still hear new 
details of that visit. They will be told you 
in quiet, reverent tones, as if spring flowers of 
France, sweet with fragrance, were being laid 
on a grave, watered by the tears of a nation's 
affection. That, indeed, is no more than a 
just symbol of the degree in which France 
remembers Edouard Sept, and, in thought, 
gives him pride of place beneath the flowing 
Tricolour. 

When he went to Biarritz he was not at all 
well, and showed it in the fact that he did not 
smoke for several days. That was a hard 
discipline for him, but he went through it, 
always with a word of sympathy for those in 
his circle who also might not smoke. He was 
very fond of peaches, and he expected a few 
to be on his table at every meal. They were, 
though, perhaps, he did not dream how 
difficult it sometimes was to secure them, 
home grown, in the months of March or April. 
He rested, lived the simple life, and soon, 
thanks to the splendid air of Biarritz, was 
back to his beloved cigar. At dinner, in the 
evening, he talked little, and showed himself 

us 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

the courteous, good listener. " When," said 
the direct depository of this information, 
" he did speak it was very much to the 
point." 

At the close, as the French tell you, of a 
sympathetic holiday among them, King Edward 
left Biarritz a very refreshed man. But, they 
explain, there is always a danger in passing 
from open windows, through which sky-blue 
sunshine and Atlantic ozone pour, to the less 
alive atmosphere of Paris. They fear that in 
Paris, on his way to London, the King caught 
a cold which led to bronchitis and his death. 

That may not be an authoritative account 
of what happened, but it lingers with the 
French, the black-edged, closing page of 
their Edouard Sept Book, because it links him 
and them so intimately. He was England to 
France in times when their courtship did not 
go quite well, and, very largely, he remains 
England to France in their happy wedlock. 

When you hear the lilt of " Tipper ary " in 
Paris, and notice how sincerely the Parisians 
salute it, you feel, instinctively, that, in their 
imagination, they see Edouard Sept passing 
by. Nay, they probably say of him, slightly 
116 



LE ROI EDOUARD SEPT! 

changing four lines in William Watson's 
beautiful poem to France : 

He was a gallant friend and fair, 

That looked us proudly in the face, 

With his frank eyes and freeborn air 
And valour half-concealed in grace. 



117 



XV. "DER TAG" IN PARIS 

The Germans proposed, and the French and the 
English disposed, at the Battle of the Marne ; 
so Paris kept herself to herself. That was 
not merely a service essential to her self- 
respect ; it was a service to the grandeur of 
the world? s life. The Prussian " Der Tag " 
in Paris — inconceivable ! Parish war day — 
a thing of simple beauty ! 



SOMEWHERE, April 1915. 

THE war day in Paris is very different from 
what the Germans expected it to be 
when they drank their boasting toast, in " bluid- 
red wine." They saw visions of the fairest 
city in Europe at their feet, of conquered men 
and women, who, they fancied, could be 
conquered. 

Actually, Paris is less warlike than London, 
for you hardly hear the blare of martial music, 
and if you see soldiers they are passing quietly 
along, perhaps to the firing line, not so very 
far away. That is a sober thought, but it does 
not deflect Paris a moment from the simple, 
ordered life which she is leading. Beyond, she 
knows, lies victory, and on that new Arc de 
Triomphe de PEtoile she keeps her bright eye 
and her gallant heart. 

You wander forth in the morning almost 
before the April sun has warmed the Grand 
Boulevards. The sap of the trees has risen, 
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NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

like the French spirit in the war, and is pour- 
ing itself into green leaves. Nature is bloom- 
ing again, and there is life for the Parisian in 
that. He is taking down his shutters, unless, 
indeed, they have been put up for the dura- 
tion of the war, with the intimation on them 
that he is Sergeant So-and-so in a marching 
regiment. 

Perhaps it will be the wife, or the sister, or 
the daughter who takes down the shutters, 
sweeps out the place, and makes it inviting 
for customers. If so there will be a friendly 
word with the other woman at the edge of 
the street, whose husband, being also a soldier, 
is scavenging his corner of the Paris streets. 
Sisters, brothers, all comrades in a great cause ; 
here is the true democracy of heart and hand. 

By now the trickle of women workers towards 
the big shops where they are employed, has 
grown into a stream. It is a stream with the 
graceful bubble and vitality which belong to 
French women, gentle and simple, plain and 
coloured, at all hours of the day. It also has 
the supple, half-mysterious strength which one 
sees in the face of a moving English stream. 
The German may threaten to come, but he 

122 



<DER TAG' IN PARIS 

goes all the time, and " business as usual " is 
the motto of the midinette. 

Why should she discard her spruceness, 
although, to be sure, it will express itself in 
black or some sober shade ? That note governs 
the long procession of women workers as they 
arrive in the morning by the " tubes," the 
only rapid way of getting about left in Paris, 
for the 'buses, like the men, are all on war 
service. Of what is happening there every 
wayfarer is keen to know, so the Paris papers 
are snapped up from the kiosks, but, alas ! 
how scant is their news. 

If Defoe were an observer of war Paris, as he 
was of London at the Plague, he would be 
keeping another journal which, while very 
different, would not be less interesting. The 
great difference would be that it would con- 
cern itself with the mental strain of a capital, 
because this is what Paris is bearing, oh, so 
bravely ! She has food and raiment, both, it is 
true, dearer than usual, and she has a pillow 
whereon to sleep, indifferent to Zeppelins, 
which, with the Parisian, as with the Londoner, 
have become a joke. But always there is the 
gnawing memory, " How is it with Pierre and 
123 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Jacques and Jean away there to the north, 
where the guns are never silent ? " 

You have this anxiety manifested in the 
second rush for papers when the hour of 
dejeuner arrives and people fare to the cafes. 
These are mostly open, just keeping open at 
" cut prices," and they testify that by and 
by Paris will resume her old familiar self. 
But meanwhile they entertain simply, in the 
mood in which they are asked for entertain- 
ment. Their guests eat to live and only 
drink enough to keep the eating company, 
more than likely plain water, or a mineral 
water. It is the simple life in cabaret, restaur- 
ant, or hotel, and by reason of that the strenu- 
ous life, such as a great war demands from 
those who reason to win it. 

With the afternoon, if it be fine, the Paris 
streets of fame and fashion wake up some- 
what. They will be conducting people along 
for an airing in the Champs Elysees, beloved 
of the British " tripper," whose challenging 
cloth cap and redoubtable Norfolk suit are not 
to be seen in war Paris. Or the afternoon 
wayfarers may be going as far as the Bois de 
Boulogne, in which case they will charter a 
124 



<DER TAG' IN PARIS 

beseeching fiacre, unless a bumpy taxi, of the 
maroon colour we first knew in London, be 
preferred. 

The Paris cocher not gone to the war is old, 
rather weary, and a trifle depressed in the 
matter of fares. " Nothing doing," he tells 
you ; " anyhow, nothing much ; merely 
scraping in enough to survive on. No at- 
tractions in the Champs Elysees," he adds, 
" except the early spring flowers and the trees, 
and the grass," as if they were not enough. 
The same, he mourns, as to the Bois, and 
Monsieur le Cocher is sad, though, somehow, 
you are not. 

You find Paris bewitching in her war mood 
and war mantle. She does not deafen your 
ears, as before, with a thousand noises, and 
threaten your life at every street crossing. She 
is so quiet, so tranquil, in the cooing French 
meaning of the word, so reposeful, and, believe 
me, more charming than ever. She is no 
longer the sparkling coquette, willing to be 
courted, if you dare ; she is the beautiful 
woman, with a sorrow at her heart, who softly 
invites sympathy and consolation. No ; Paris 
is not herself ; she is better and greater ; the 
125 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

heroine as well as the sweetheart of the 
world. 

She drinks tea mildly at five o'clock, because 
she has grown to love that English habit and 
because she is loyal to our beautiful eyes. 
Over it the women talk somewhat of the 
fashions, although they will tell you that in 
Paris there are none, any more than there is 
social entertaining. The elegant gown of 
black, or navy blue, the trig hat, which ever 
mirrors its wearer's personality; those are 
the highest distractions the serious Parisienne 
allows herself. Possibly her way of saying so 
will be that she is tired, after much nursing, 
and that now the pressure on the Paris hospitals 
is less than it was, she is glad to rest. 

If you knew all, you might know that in her 
own room at home, there is an image of St. 
Mary Magdalene, with a lamp always burning 
beside it, and that here hangs a photograph 
of one much beloved, whom God protect ! 
Paris lives nobly for what it has just now to 
do in this world, but its people never lived 
nearer the other world, as you feel, instinc- 
tively, if you enter Notre Dame. It is hushed 
in the dying afternoon, and the long shadows 
126 



'DER TAG' IN PARIS 

are creeping thickly into it. But in its shelter 
you behold the bowed figures of women 
praying ; aye, and of old men, also praying. 

That, to some, is how the night comes in 
Paris at an heroic time, and to most it brings 
the quietude of the domestic fireside. There 
are only sparks of the ancient radiant life, and 
people go to bed early, being, in that, good 
citizens and true patriots. The tranquillity 
lets them dream fondly of those heart-riven 
northern trenches where each sullen inch is 
won by a death, but where also : 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 



127 



XVI. A FAIRYLAND IN TOWN 

War and peace, how different they are ! Not 
only on the embattled field, where men slay 
and are slain, win a victory or lose. Not 
only in the great thoroughfares of national life, 
but in places which are of no consequence to 
the struggle. Of Hyde Park in war time we 
have seen something, and now for a dream 
there of Rotten Row as it was in peace time. 



SOMEWHERE, April 19 15 

SPRING came to Rotten Row the other 
forenoon while I sat under a tree looking 
for it. It came like a fairy story, as it should, 
after a whole string of heraldings. It is odd 
how you look and look for things in the wrong 
way, and then suddenly, out of the blue of 
space, or the crack of time, they arrive stealthily, 
beautifully, taking you by surprise. 

It was a fine forenoon, with the wind north- 
east and cold, but the sun clear, and for once 
masterful of our London haze. I happened 
to look up at those iron shutters which the 
" Iron Duke " put on his windows at Hyde 
Park Corner. They are a memorial of much 
that has happened since the far Chartist days, 
and perhaps they are also a portent of the 
future, or so their grim endurance might 
suggest. 

What struck me, however, was the lighter 
thought that somebody must have been dusting 
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NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

them, that they looked more green and less 
grey than usual, as if a kindly hand had been 
rubbing them up to meet the rising sun of 
spring. Perhaps I was wrong, but it did not 
matter, for it was a pleasant fancy with which 
to go into Rotten Row. 

Scarcely had I put foot there when I ran 
against a particular man, a stranger, and yet 
no stranger, whom I have often seen in my 
Hyde Park walks. He is one of the " regulars " 
of Rotten Row, a real " Pomanderer," if I 
may make a word, a fellow with a merry, 
jestful face, who somehow takes you back in 
thought to the dandies of the Georgian days. 
He creases his trousers hard and hitches them 
high, he wears his hat — bowler, straw, or 
topper — far back on his head, and he has a 
general, if somewhat weary, air of the old 
" bloods." 

He is not a present-day " knut " at all, 
being come over to years, and he carries his 
dandyism, if it be a little threadbare, with a 
certain leisurely dignity. I had learned to 
regard him as a portent of the " season " in 
the park, of spring budding in London, and 
here he was to confirm my idea. Perhaps 
132 



A FAIRYLAND IN TOWN 

later, if I had been in another part of London, 
I should, as I once did, have seen him taking 
a halfpenny fare homeward on a tramcar, but 
that would have been to spoil the tale. 

Next it struck me that the brigade of 
nursemaids in Rotten Row was less conspicuous 
than usual. It was not that there were fewer 
of them about, but that they were somewhat 
lost in the presence of a crowd of other people. 
Spring was in the air, it had got into the bluish 
blood of my lady and my lord, and they had 
stepped along to see the " Row " once more 
after the winter. Possibly, too, they had read 
in the papers that the King was resuming his 
morning canters, and though it was late to 
see him, they would be in the fashion by 
strolling where he had ridden. Imitation, 
you know, is the sincerest loyalty as well as 
flattery. 

It is a second, different company of horsemen 
and horse-women who frequent Rotten Row 
in the forenoon, the decorative folk. They 
were more numerous than they had been, and 
there seemed to be more life in them than 
the riders of the dim winter had manifested. 
These had ridden for duty and health, but 
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NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

here were young girls with rosy cheeks and 
middle-aged women on whose faces the wind 
had painted the colour of youth, making them 
sprightly again. They were riding for joy, 
because in the spring a middle-aged woman's 
thoughts turn back to youth, with the de- 
termination to reconquer it. Even the horses 
seemed to have the new spring life in their 
gallop, for they threw up their heads, pricked 
their ears, and found diversion in flinging the 
tan from their hind feet. 

Yes, spring was all about, and yet, like a 
bashful girl-bride, it hesitated to declare itself. 
Thinking and feeling this, I sat down under 
that tree, a favourite tree, where you may 
command a long sight of the " Row," be 
sheltered a trifle from a north-easter, and get 
the warm sun. A pair of pigeons had their 
nest in it yester year, away up towards the top, 
where the branches were close and the leaves 
thick. They cooed and cooed all the early 
season, troubling not about the butterfly-world 
down below, which, most likely, troubled little 
about them. 

Well, I happened, for that memory was 
unconsciously in me, to look upward, and 
134 



A FAIRYLAND IN TOWN 

there, what do you think I saw ? Why, the 
master pigeon sitting on a lean branch, pro- 
specting the remains of his last year's home. 
He evidently had come to see if it had lasted 
the winter well enough to be made into a new 
nest for this spring. A pigeon which remem- 
bered, and meant to save itself undue labour ; 
or a pigeon which had such a happy, loving, 
family time that he wanted it all over again in 
the same place — which ? 

He hopped around the remains of the nest, 
which was jagged and disturbed, and of less 
bulk than it had been, testing a stick here and 
letting it fall, if it happened to be a rotten 
one, cracked in two, almost at my feet. In 
a little while he flew away towards Kensington 
Gardens, perhaps to carry the tidings to his 
lady love that they will nest again in Rotten 
Row. Of course she will be the same lady 
love ; but I am going to watch and make 
sure. 

Those were all heralds of the spring, and, 
leaning against my tree, I could almost feel 
the sap rising within it from the ground below, 
where it had been safely stored away from the 
cold. Flowers were blooming on the grass, 
i3S 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

red and white and yellow, a fine sprinkling 
of nature in London. Partly, however, that 
was the art of the clever gardeners whom I 
saw actively digging in plants which had 
flowered in hothouses, making fine pictures 
with them on the green grass lawns. Art, 
you see, helping forward the coming of spring, 
and this thought made you look for her more 
wistfully. If you could not see her quite 
distinctly, was it because, like the Spanish 
fleet of history, she was not yet in sight ? 

Guided by my wander mood of wonder, 
I walked over and leaned on the rail which 
runs along the side of Rotten Row. Casually, 
idly, I looked up and down the far vista which 
this gave me, and then, swiftly but surely, I 
saw spring come like a dream. I saw it because 
I had looked in such a way that I got the big 
trees on either side of the " Row " all aligned 
into a sort of processional way, and, seeing 
them so, they shot at me a lace-like world of 
tender green. You cannot fancy how beautiful 
those green mansions seemed — ethereal, as 
from heaven, yet real, as of the earth. 

The buds were still faint, but they were 
there ; and when you had them as an organised 
136 



A FAIRYLAND IN TOWN 

pageant they gave you a picture of the airy, 
fairy greenery which is the true birth of spring. 
The vision only lasted for a moment during 
which the sun struck the " Row " strongly, 
lighting it up as if with a great searchlight. 
Under that shaft from the source of all life, 
the double range of trees seemed to catch 
their new birthright, and to become a long 
shimmer of poetry, fading away into the 
beyond of Kensington Gardens. 

It was a sweet wonder, this coming of spring 
to Rotten Row, and if you go there yourself, 
and look in the right fashion, you also may 
see it, even in war time, though not so easily. 



137 



XVII. THE ROLL OF HONOUR 

It is a beautiful name, the Roll of Honour. It 
bespeaks gallantry, heroism, certainly self- 
sacrifice and patriotism. But behind it lie an 
ocean of tears, a world of sorrow, a desert of 
broken hearts. Hardly any of us but has been 
sorely wounded by bereavement. It helps our 
own burdens if we can talk of them to others. 
Moreover, we owe it to the dead to add their 
stories to the Golden Legend. 



SOMEWHERE, May 191 5. 

EUROPEAN civilisation at the crack of its 
future — that is a tremendous issue, and 
we feel it. 

But what bites acutely into us all is to come, 
some morning in the casualty list, upon the 
name of a dear friend, whom we shall see never 
more. That is stamping a page of life with 
death, not merely inventing one, as the story- 
tellers do, and of such a stroke I am going to 
tell, because most people have suffered in kind, 
the eternal touch of nature which unites 
humanity. 

" Killed in action " ! Three very ordinary 
words, but how poignant they can be when 
they come home to you. They would scarcely 
make a title for a sensation novel, and yet how 
many love stories have they braided in the 
black of war ? 

Think that every fallen Briton has the family 
circle which it needed him to complete. It 
141 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

was elated by a victory, but it waited with 
anxiety to hear if he had won through it alive. 
We are both the nation and ourselves ; we 
bear the big burdens all together as a com- 
munity, and our own severally as individuals. 
Our cheers are for the nation, our griefs for 
ourselves, and we do not grumble. But we 
surfer to the quick, and while we suffer how 
can a novelist persuade us to turn his jousting 
pages ? 

Perhaps that is the broad philosophy behind 
the gallant death of my young friend, away 
there across the Narrow Seas, " somewhere in 
France." He himself, though so young, only 
four and twenty, was a thinker, one who looked 
wisdom in the face, seeking it simply, with 
sympathy and tact, as it needs to be sought 
if it is to be captured. But his every thought, 
when the war came, was to go to it as a duty, 
to instantly take the high road and follow 
where it called. That was in harmony with 
what he had been doing when I first met him 
at his father's beautiful house in Canada ; for 
ever the boy is father to the man. 

There had been an excellent blow-out at 
the University, and this curly-headed, bright- 
142 



THE ROLL OF HONOUR 

eyed, lithe-limbed lad had played a captain's 
part in it. The gownsmen had, more or less, 
held up the town and then, from housetops, 
drowned off the police with hydrants. It was 
a wholly successful " rag," because the Young 
Hopefuls made good their retreat, an achieve- 
ment which both the town and the police 
rather liked. 

But next morning my Captain Rebel pre- 
sented himself in the right quarter, said he 
had been the chief sinner, and declared his 
willingness there and then to father the penalty. 
His frank manliness got him off lightly, as 
perhaps he had counted on, for even then he 
was accustomed to seeing things through. It 
also made him a bit of a hero, and that he had 
not at all counted on. " Yes, my boy," said 
his father, patting him fondly on the head, 
" but don't do it again." 

We recalled the incident when, having 
grown to the spring of manhood, he came to 
London, and he always laughed, as much as 
to say, " It was worth doing — but not again ! " 
He brought with him to London, as I thought, 
some of the old grace and graciousness of 
French Canada. He was of a purely British 
H3 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

stock, but he had been born and brought up 
in the heart of the French country of Quebec. 
He was accustomed to hear his father say 
" Madame " to a Habitant woman plucking 
weeds in the garden beside the Falls of Mont- 
morency. He knew all his father's relics, 
gathered from the old battlefields where the 
English and the French fought each other 
around Quebec, and the romance in them did 
not miss him. He spoke French surely, and, 
when he liked, could give it the wooing cadence 
of a courtier. 

Altogether he had personality, an air, a 
winningness which captured and a serious 
manliness which held you. To a Young 
Lochinvar love's young dream, and it brought 
as sweet, as loyal, and as handsome a heroine 
as you could picture, a Scottish girl living in 
London Town. 

" Killed in action " ! Ah, when one re- 
members those scarlet letters one pauses in 
our " ower true tale." But it is an hundred- 
fold story, striking into most houses, though it 
may vary in form, so one goes on again, feeling 
there is a sympathetic public beyond, eager 
for detail. It is extraordinary how few people 
144 



THE ROLL OF HONOUR 

can tell an experience, ordinary in its humanity 
to us all, in written-down words, and therefore 
is it natural for the heart to leap at such a 
record when it is encountered, be it ill or well 
told. 

Courtship, talk of the future, happy hours 
and rosy days, a fair pageant in prospect, all 
that made life good. That happy state is 
well arrived when two young folk have met 
who seemed made to meet : a girl with the 
simple girlish qualities which we love as 
making for a strong, tender womanhood ; a 
lad of parts that were bound to carry him far 
and win him friends everywhere. And then — 
then the stroke of the war-drum which has 
muffled so many songs of affectionate joy. 

He returned home on " short leave " after 
three months' fighting and we found the boy 
had become a man. War ripens quickly, or 
destroys, like a hot sun, and it had ripened 
him. Behind the merry light of his eyes 
there were distances, as of strange things seen 
and stranger things unseen. A touch of 
melancholy came into the old ringing laugh, 
for he laughs best who laughs first in the 
trenches. He had the loam of them in his 
l 145 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

clothes, the mud of them on his boots ; he 
was, as he put it himself, a troglodyte on 
holiday. 

Well, the crawling and scraping and hunch- 
ing in those " dug-outs " had lengthened his 
legs and broadened his shoulders and made him 
larger bodily as well as mentally. He had been 
schooled in the most awful school of experience 
the world has known, and he returned a master 
of it. 

When you asked him about the war, what it 
meant to the human being in it, he had not 
much to say, there resembling most soldiers. 
War ties up talk, possibly because its actualities 
leave so little to the imagination. He did not 
speak of bravery or derring-do, but assumed 
them in every man at war. He did, though, 
mention the importance of kindliness and 
camaraderie as between officers and men. 

To be a band of brothers, like the Gari- 
baldians, that was to win in battle, where 
personality, the soul in the legions, is the ulti- 
mate factor. Discipline and efficiency led by 
the heart — there lay the power to conquer, 
even against a Juggernaut military machine. 

And then, one asked him, what were the 
146 



THE ROLL OF HONOUR 

chances for a junior regimental officer, pro- 
motion or an ending, glory or death ? Ah, it 
was a matter of chance, of luck, of the shears 
of accident, or so it seemed. One man would 
have a succession of hazardous duties and 
march through them unhurt. Another, so 
recently arrived at the front that the fresh 
colour of England was still in his face, would 
be taken. The roll was called after the battle, 
not before it, meaning that the Gods of War 
counted the slain, not those who went into 
battle. 

Only an old war-scarred head on young 
shoulders could have said that in that way. 
But of this there was certainty ; if a regiment 
got jammed into a tense part of a war line, a 
" hole," half-made by the enemy, its chances 
of coming out without grave losses was slight. 
Necessarily the toll in officers would be high, 
because the motto governing their lives and 
deaths was always, " Action — front ! " 

Well, our gallant gentleman might, when he 
spoke thus, have been foreseeing what would 
happen to his own regiment and himself, a 
month or more after he returned to the war 
from his " short leave " and his sweetheart. 
H7 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Tidings of it all arrived in a manner of pathos 
so touching that only truth could have achieved 
it. Art, even at its happiest, needs machinery, 
and you may see the moving finger, but fact 
just comes. It stands not on the order of its 
arrival, but knells at you and no questions are 
asked of it. Who would think of challenging 
the last trump ? 

Miss and then her address in London ! 

A letter thus inscribed was delivered by the 
postman, with others, one morning. The 
writing was unfamiliar, it clearly came from 
the war, what could it be ? Quickly, with a 
dull dread, it was torn open by an agitated 
and loving girl who managed to read the first 
few sentences, in this sense : 

" Dear Madame, I don't know your name 
and I am only able to write you as I am doing 
because I have opened a letter from you to 
— — . You will excuse me for doing that, as 
I wished, being his captain and he my right- 
hand lieutenant, to tell you how splendidly he 
behaved through long days of fearful fighting, 
and how gallantly he died for his country. . . ." 

Ah ! but it could not be true, it could not 
148 



THE ROLL OF HONOUR 

be true. with the curly hair, dead, dead, 

dead ! No, no, no, it could not be ! Still 
the captain's letter, although she could not 
read any more of it then, went on with its 
fatal and brave story, a veritable epic of high 
service. 

It was at Ypres, where his regiment had 
been hurried up to hold a danger spot. Regi- 
ment, officers and men, they had held it 
against all odds, but how they had lost ! 
Our hero had come through the main hell 
unscathed, although he had been on the danger 
jobs, out " wiring " and taking patrol duty 
over against the enemy trenches. His men, 
who were devoted to him, had learned to say 
that, for what he was and did, he would, one 
day, certainly get the V.C. or the D.S.O. or — 
a bullet ! 

So far he had worn the charmed life of the 
quietly brave man and the accomplished 
soldier. Nay, he was being recommended 
for his gallantry and ability, and that would 
have spelt a captaincy at twenty-four. Truly, 
it was already his in deed, for a cry came that 
he was to take command of a company of the 
regiment which had lost every officer. He 
149 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

hied him to the place of this new duty, and 
was mastering its situation, encouraging the 
effective men who were left by real leadership 
and tending the wounded, when a bullet 
struck him in the head and he fell to it. 

Sad, heart-breaking, was it not ? Yes, al- 
though a great death, a death to treasure in 
memory. The fine flower of a beautiful life 
cut down before it had fully flowered ; a life 
torn from another that loved to hang upon it, 
and from it drew life. Romance turned to 
tragedy, love's young dream draped in black— 
and it is the story of many fond young people. 
But no, no, no ! it could not be, it could not 
be, for it was without reason that he should 
be dead. 

Hope, when it is based on true love can only 
be killed if no hope at all is left. And glad 
tidings of the " killed in action " have, in 
some cases, later come from the beyond of 
the war, where there are many secrets. So 
let it be that he " is not dead but sleepeth," 
and that is how he is in her heart, to whom he 
was the first and the last, world without end. 
Amen ! 



150 



XVIII. WHAT THE SEA TELLS 

It tells us that not wolf-grey submarines, not 
treacherous mines, not all the " /rightfulness " 
" made in Germany" can keep us off the 
element natural to us as an island people. 
Since time came out of the cold mists, we have 
lived by the sea and ruled it to our living. 
Please God, we shall continue to live by it 
and rule it, and, when the spirit moves us, 
follow our duty, or take our pleasure on it. 



SOMEWHERE, June 191 5. 

SURELY, you may sail the seas even in war 
time, thanks to Admiral Jack who sits 
up aloft, " somewhere in the North Sea," 
looking after England and us. The atmosphere 
on your liner will be keener, the outlook sharper, 
and she may steer by the stars, with lights 
out, but she sails all the same and, in the 
Providence which " slumbers not nor sleeps," 
she usually gets there on time. Nay, the ad- 
venturous call of the sea is louder in war days 
to the good adventurer bound south. 

We saw the hills of Spain when the ship 
dipped to her port-holes, as if happy at being 
out of the dank, inky waters of Biscay, into 
those of a sweeter sea. The sun was on the 
hills of Spain, spangling them with bars of 
silver and gold, like a new Spanish Main. It 
caught them where the salt waves ended 
white, and shot up their slopes until it and 
they were lost in the blue azure of heaven. 
iS3 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

" A beautiful range," said somebody. 
" Queenly mountains," said somebody else. 
" Yes," added the lady who talked England, 
home and beauty all the time, " and now they 
have an English Queen." 

It was an unexpected jerk, but then your 
English woman of that sort moves mentally on 
such a restricted line that it is very much worn, 
and she jerks you all the time. She is perfectly 
unconscious of this, bless her, and amazed, 
even indignant, when now and then a smile 
goes round. She has none herself, no blithe 
talk, no wit and wisdom, never a word with 
a crack of nutty surprise in it. But she has 
her uses, if you will only make up your mind 
to bear with her, and this time she brought 
out the captain's little memory. 

" Yes," he said, " when the Queen of Spain 
was a girl she and her mother travelled with 
me several times. Princess Ena was as merry 
as she was pretty, and she was full of artless 
chatter. Once at lunch, just as it might 
have been now, she amused us by saying, 
' Oh ! we don't like Uncle Billy,' meaning 
the Kaiser, ' so very, very much, because he's 
not young enough with us; but Uncle 
iS4 



WHAT THE SEA TELLS 

Teddy,' meaning King Edward, ' he's a 
ripper ! ' " 

" Charming," quoth the Knight from his 
corner of the table, " a delightful tribute to a 
delightful and truly kingly personality. There 
was, I suppose, only one side of King Edward's 
character which would stand no nonsense — 
he would never have anybody presume. An 
anecdote which may be new to you illustrates 
this very well, and I believe it to be genuine." 

There came a hush in that small clatter of 
knives and forks which makes the under-music 
of a lunch table. It might have been the 
sighting of a submarine on the far horizon 
and word of it getting about, only it wasn't. 
" Ah ! " said the agreeable Prince, in antici- 
pation, and his young wife, the very handsome 
Princess, looked an irresistible invitation to 
go on with the story. Of course the Knight 
did that, having such royal permission and 
having first made his point of dramatic interest, 
as a good talker must. 

" Well," he said, " somebody, whose name 

matters not at all, had been introduced to 

King Edward, who, as usual, was disposed 

to be friendly. Eventually the conversation so 

155 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

shaped itself that the newcomer was able to 
say, ' May I offer you a cigar, sir ? ' The King 
took it, and was going to light it, when the 
giver remarked, ' I think you will find it good, 
sir, for it was given to me long ago by your 
brother, the Duke of Edinburgh.' * Ah ! ' 
said the King, e my dear brother never was a 
good judge of a cigar,' and he threw it away, 
and turned on his heel, a swift rebuke to 
presumption." 

" That reminds me ! " is a useful motto at 
the lunch-table of a liner, when she emerges 
from the cold cross-tumble of the Bay of 
Biscay, and the ladies have begun to come 
back to their seats. They expect a welcome 
after their absence, and a reward for having 
been cooped up in their cabins. No welcome, 
no reward, is more acceptable than the re- 
counting of a few stories with a simple touch 
of humanity in them. Jokes and careless chat 
always make a joyful atmosphere, but on the 
sea, with its feeling of massive uncanniness, 
they are doubly kindly. 

" Don't, if you want me to esteem you," 
our skipper would say, " ask every morning, 
' What's the weather going to be ? ' or ' When 
156 



WHAT THE SEA TELLS 

shall we arrive ? ' In all my years at sea I 
have never got away from those questions, 
although I admit that just now there is some 
reason for them. When, at the beginning 
of a voyage, I sit down among a new company 
of guests I look round instinctively and wonder, 
' Now who will be the first to ask about the 
weather and when shall we arrive ? ' Generally 
I pick out the winner, and when he or she 
speaks up I try to answer nicely. But there 
is only one real answer, and it might be 
printed : ' My dear sir, or lady, Providence 
alone can tell what the weather this day will 
be, or when we shall arrive in port.' Some- 
times such strange things happen in the moods 
of the ocean that one almost doubts if even 
Providence can answer ; but a sailor man 
must have faith, hard, steadfast faith, above 
everything else. It is his sheet-anchor all the 
time ; faith and a sense of humour." 

That is a wise and serviceable catechism ; 
an abiding hold on the unseen powers which 
are about those who go down to the sea in 
ships and do business in great waters, and a 
disposition to lighten them by having a merry 
heart that will beat all the day, and not tire 
157 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

even when your ship is battling against a 
Biscay sou'-wester, the worst gale in that 
gale-whipped region. This, anyhow, was the 
verdict on sea-ways that we amateurs had 
arrived at when we saw a smile creep over the 
captain's face and knew there was a yarn 
behind it. 

True, your skipper hates sea-lawyer questions, 
though he does his best to be courteous in 
handling them. But he loves you if you can 
cap his stories with others as good, and he 
may conceive a regard for you if you are only 
a nice listener. Why not ? It all takes him 
out of the war-weighty concerns of the bridge 
for a moment, and, moreover, you may be 
giving him new things for his wallet of stories. 

" Breakfast," said our genial commander, 
" should be a quiet meal, with plenty to eat, 
little to say ; but, if you like, much to think — 
a half hour of meditation and preparation. 
By lunch you will have the fresh knowledge 
of half a new day to discuss, using an anecdote 
and a moral for piquant sauce. But dinner 
is the time for right talk, when the night 
cometh and no man can work except yourself, 
your officers and crew — and the searchlights ! 
158 



WHAT THE SEA TELLS 

Ah ! dinner's the time, because then, whether 
or no we be all feeling our best, we will be 
looking it in dress clothes. Now I was for 
years a member of a club in Australia which 
made country expeditions with a dinner at 
the end of them, and our one rigid rule was 
that members must dress for it. No excuse 
taken ; you must dress for dinner — it was 
absolute." 

" And a very good rule," broke in the Prince, 
voicing the view of everybody else, for on 
ship-board, especially, it is a pleasant diversion 
in the day's want of work. What else could 
make a sea-voyage of any length endurable 
for the women folk ? They may tire of deck- 
chairs, however soft and comfortable these 
are, and of looking day after day on the mild 
flirtations of the promenade deck, salt-water 
pomanderings which kill time oftener than 
they break hearts. 

They may even, the dear ladies, grow 
weary themselves of pomandering, and return 
to the pages of the discarded novel. While 
there may be a sweet little cherub that sits 
up aloft, on a liner, to look after poor Jack, 
that cherub isn't Cupid of the curls, because 
159 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

they don't flourish in the moist air of the ocean. 
Pomandering doesn't last, without all the 
illusions implied by curls and dimples, but 
the dress parade for dinner is always possible 
and always intriguing. 

So the Prince had reflected, but an amused 
look was in the captain's eye as he very de- 
liberately said, " Yes, our club was inflexible 
about dressing for dinner ; you had to wear 
a scarf round your neck even if the weather 
was broiling ! " 

That is one of the high arts of story-telling, 
to lead your audience subtly on, and then give 
them a slapping anti-climax. We all roared 
with laughter, and if, in the forties, you can 
still roar yourselves sore, why, you may take 
it that there's balm in Gilead yet. 

Certainly there is youth in the sea, and you 
can court it any week by sailing due south, 
pretty safe in the knowledge that no Hunnish 
pirates will sing over you the old " bluggy " 
sea-song which Stevenson's John Silver loved : 

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest, 

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum ! 
Drink and the devil had done for the rest, 

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum ! 

1 60 



XIX. SMALL TALK IN GREAT WATERS 

However big the times may be, however laden with 
history-making, we do not divorce ourselves 
from small talk. We could not if we tried, for 
it runs in human nature, woman's especially, 
and blessings be on her for it. Hence a small 
talk of things seen, despite war's alarums, in 
that sea street called the Straits of Gibraltar. 



SOMEWHERE, June 1915. 

IT is fine to waken in the morning to a real 
dream, especially in the sun-struck Bay of 
Tangier, for that was how, escaping all war 
risks, which, indeed, incommoded us not at 
all, we came to Gibraltar. 

You could not sleep soundly, because there 
was a feeling of a new Old World about, and it 
got into you. The narrow Straits of Gibraltar 
which divide two continents, the Pillars of Her- 
cules, which once bounded the travels of the 
European, the Atlas Mountains, beyond which 
life still has a real simplicity ! Ah ! here was 
a dream of dreams, and when the fall of the 
great anchor called me on deck, it all lay spread 
out under the eye. 

Up came one curious figure after another, 
clothed in pyjamas , dressing-gown and slippers, 
and men never look their best then. They 
seem raw, and rough, as might a beast that has 
been disturbed in its lair. Happily this man 
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NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

savagery was redeemed by glimpses of pretty 
faces showing warily at cabin windows, and here 
and there by the whisk of a gown so filmy in tex- 
ture that the morning breeze caught it into 
rebellion. One little lady came forth spick and 
span even to a red coat, which had warmed 
everybody to her side, and not warned them 
off, as from danger. That was how this realm 
of old renown saw us, and one wondered what 
it silently thought, having us and our liner 
come, as it were, out of Armageddon in the 
unknown north. 

We had none of the easy colour of the boat- 
crew of Moors who presently raced alongside, 
and Tangier, sitting on its hillside, made us 
seem very un-wonderful. Swart and bearded 
faces, brown legs, and all the colours of the rain- 
bow in costume ; what a sorry figure the 
pyjamaed men cut beside those Moors. Upon 
my word, if I had been a Moor I should have 
showed my disdain, but they did not ; they 
were merely indifferent. We could not be, for 
to look upon Tangier from the sea is to behold 
one of the sweet sights of the earth. 

The town rises in two folds towards the great 
background of the Atlas Mountains, where 
164 



SMALL TALK IN GREAT WATERS 

Raisuli and his merry men fight on their own 
little war against the incrop of another civilisa- 
tion, and quite like the exercise. Why is it that 
one's heart instinctively goes out to a city built 
on a hill ? There is effect, of course ; you see 
the picture ; but that is not all. Perhaps it is 
the lift towards Heaven, the suggestion of a 
Jacob's ladder going upward, that catches us on 
the spiritual side. 

Certainly the charm always works, and Tan- 
gier has it from its shore line, where the Atlantic 
was beating in soft ribbons, clear away to the 
farthest minaret. Oh ! to land and smell 
Moorish Africa in the streets, for you never 
know much of a country until you know its 
smells. But a shipper's business is that of life, 
to move on, and Gibraltar awaited us, sitting 
there like a lion in the path of two seas, 
garrisoned to the last man, armed to the teeth, 
with ships of war grimly on guard. 

To me the little word " Gib " had stood for 
a great thing in the romance of our history as a 
nation. Its Moorish castle goes back to a.d. 
71 i, and to Tarig ben Zaid, who took Gibraltar 
and gave it for name a corruption of his own. 
Nay, the Romans left marks on the rocks, as 

165 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

they left marks wherever they went. A dozen 
sieges had beaten about it, and finally we stolid 
Britishers had held on where victor after victor 
had become the vanquished. But for days I 
had heard " service " people, military officers 
and their wives, speak of Gibraltar as if it were 
a shop or factory. 

This hard, ungrateful impression was, in a 
manner, confirmed by the outer appearance of 
" Gib." A greyish fog, such, I was told, as they 
get there when the wind blows from a particu- 
lar quarter, lay over its mass of pale, grey lime- 
stone. Smoke rose from the battleships and 
the other ships in the harbour, and altogether 
the atmosphere might have been that of a 
factory town. Moreover, the necessary air of 
grimness was present in the moles and struc- 
tures of one kind or another, which have to do 
with the defences. You might, if you wanted, 
see the noble form of a sleeping lion in this huge 
rock ; but you needed a stretch of vision to do 
so. In any case it was a sternly embattled lion, 
ironed to the claws, and ugly as a result. 

But as the cloud of fog lifted and the sun 
struck bolder on the ragged sides of " Gib," 
the " service " nightmare melted. The historic 
166 



SMALL TALK IN GREAT WATERS 

tradition of it returned when you got hold of 
its many colourings, when you looked beyond 
the moles to the rising hillside of strangely- 
varied buildings, when your view ended where 
the foliage bloomed green and the flowers 
danced. Up there the sentinels of many races 
had watched the tide of siege after siege, and 
from there you could see perfectly the little red 
town of San Roque, which the Spaniards of 
" Gib " founded when we came and they left 
to a man. No ; we step ashore, not into the 
" shop " of those rather unpoetic " service 
people " — they are always like that — but into 
a Walhalla of history and interest. 

When, being duly accredited, as you must 
in Armageddon time, you look round a place 
new to you, but old in story, it is well to have 
somebody with you who belongs to it. You 
may do all the talking ; but even so, you will 
get what you most need, that very subtle thing, 
atmosphere, or perhaps it is reverence. So 
convoyed, you are as if you were sending 
unwritten letters to those you like best, a 
frequent experience to most of us, whether or 
not the letters be delivered at the other end. 
Now, to " Gib " I was saluted by a mere casual 
167 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Spaniard man, master of a little English and 
more French, who said he was an authorised 
guide. The melting twinkle in his Spanish 
eyes was worth the fee he asked, and we set out. 

You catch, without undue risk, lots of Span- 
ish eyes in " Gib," at all events dark eyes, for 
the population is a melange. It is a mongrel 
stock of Genoese, Maltese, Spaniards, and Jews, 
with a braiding of Moors from the African 
shore. A good-looking people ? Perhaps not ; 
but they have character, they are picturesque. 
They scarcely bother about you as you move 
among them, unless you go into the flower mar- 
ket, and then you are invited a thousand times 
to buy. Probably you do, for the flowers, 
carried over from Spain every morning, are 
lovely and cheap. 

You could, if you had a lady-love in " Gib," 
load her with flowers for a shilling or two, 
and naturally the money would be well spent. 
But being a mere wanderer you have no such 
happy occupation on the " Rock," and you pass 
into its three streets that count. Shops with 
trinkets everywhere, and won't you just look 
in ? — such bargains ! Teacloths from Malta, 
gold work from Granada, stringed stones from 
1 68 



SMALL TALK IN GREAT WATERS 

" India's coral strand," Brummagem wares from 
England, and almost untaxed tobacco ! 

No ! you are not much interested until you 
run across a donkey laden with water-barrels, 
and then you learn how " Gib " refreshes itself. 
It has no springs rising cool from its stony 
depths, and it has to gather the rainfall and 
store it. Drinking water thus has its own value 
— to be accurate, about one penny a small 
barrel — and I should fancy that on the " Rock " 
soda is mostly drunk with whisky. Only that 
may be said of London or any other place, with 
less excuse for it. 

There are little pilgrimages to be made in 
Gibraltar : to the batteries, or such of them 
as you are allowed to visit, on the upper heights ; 
to the barracks, where Thomas Atkins, Regular 
and Territorial, in his several British uniforms, 
is at home : or to an old churchyard which 
holds the bones of some of Nelson's Trafalgar 
heroes. Your wise plan is to walk round, as I 
did, asking and receiving information, and now 
and then, perhaps, imparting a trifle. There 
was a chemist's shop that attracted me, and I 
entered and found the ' chemist a charming 
veteran from Devonshire. " Ah," he said, 
169 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

" that was fifty years ago," but he had not 
forgotten the scent of Devon lanes in summer. 
All the time " Gib " is a great citadel set in 
the sea, at a point where the world has wagged 
to some tune in the past. Of this I was re- 
minded when I was leaving, by the boom of 
" first gun-fire." That is the curfew of the 
" Rock," telling any strangers within its gates 
to depart ; in our case for Marseilles, Paris — 
and Armageddon again ! 



170 



XX. THE WAR PARISIENNE 

What shall one say of the war Parisienne ? At 
any time there could be no Paris without her — 
it would be an Eveless Eden indeed — but she is 
indispensable to war Paris, and the greater part 
of it. Greatly has she borne her part and so 
will she bear it for ever, because the Parisienne 
is a true, womanly woman. It does one good 
to see her proudly ordering her proud capital, 
while her men fight for La Patrie^ 



SOMEWHERE, July 191 5. 

"\ T TAR Paris is like a beautiful widow just re- 

* * covering from the first shock of a great 
sorrow and wondering if her black gown is 
becoming. 

So is the war Parisienne ; she weeps for her 
lost, mourns with the fine dignity of a Roman 
matron, but the light for life and beauty is still 
in her eye, where, indeed, it will shine for ever. 
She is that sweetest of all things, a woman be- 
tween tears and smiles, because the one opens 
her heart and the other mirrors her mind. 

Let us consider her a little as she trips along 
the Rue de la Paix, for she really won't object. 
Why should she ? That might be her arch 
reply, but she would say nothing, knowing 
the eloquence of silence when it encounters 
admiration. 

The Parisienne is naturally sensitive, sym- 
pathetic not merely to her surroundings, but 
to atmosphere, a more delicate element. 
173 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Therefore she is wearing a vivandiere skirt, a 
coat or blouse with a high military collar, a hat 
having the air of a tattoo, and long-legged 
boots, in brown or grey cloth. 

That is the general picture she makes, and if 
Napoleon, who understood women, could see 
her, he would find her very appealing to his 
sense of generalship. Not an Amazonian touch, 
not the suggestion of it, for such would be 
clumsiness unworthy of the Parisienne. And 
still, there she is, with the war all over her, in 
pleats and tucks, and she never looked more 
taking. 

If the Parisienne were placed in a new, 
strange world she would seize its fashions in a 
day and make them part of herself. That is 
her wonderful secret in the mysterious affair 
of dress ; she never lets its vagaries tyrannise 
over her, but, by some heaven-given system 
of sap and mine, reduces them to her own 
characteristics. 

You don't notice, until you stare and blink 
in the sunshine of Paris, that she has annexed 
the mode militaire, because there is no evident 
advertisement of the fact about her. But you 
know instinctively that she is dressed in the 
J 74 



THE WAR PARISIENNE 

note of the time, and that means reverence, 
graciousness, imagination, a salutation to manly 
chivalry in the trenched field, from beauty at 
home. There is no set intention of this, and 
no desire to achieve a picture ; simply natural 
feeling takes artistic expression, as if by the wave 
of a fairy wand. 

The Parisienne, in war time, as in peace 
time, has about her something faery which she 
alone knows how to weave and wear. You 
cannot tell where it comes from, or what are 
its parts, or lay hold of it, but it is there. Pos- 
sibly it is in her walk ; anyhow Shakespeare 
might have seen her in far vision when he wrote, 
" Nay, her foot speaks." 

Possibly it is in her carriage, so assured and 
easy and yet so persuasive, cajoling. Possibly 
it is in her appearance, those bold, intelligent 
eyes, which look you through, the rich, speak- 
ing mouth, the hearing ears, half lost among 
curls, the brow, purposeful, decisive, even 
beneath a hat. She is at once the capable 
woman and the woman with witchery, she can 
sit at the receipt of custom all day, a fine mana- 
ger of business, and yet, as she departs from it, 
have somebody apply to her Tennyson's line in 
175 



/ 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Maud, " And feet like sunny gems on an English 
mead." 

Maybe that suggests the happy comparison ; 
an English lawn bordered by a trim English 
hedge. Both have elegant simplicity, because 
time has beaten the needless things out of 
them. Fancy one of those matchless carpets 
of grass at an Oxford college, a composed pic- 
ture of Nature and art in ripe harmony. They 
have struggled with each other and with the 
gardener for a century to achieve it, but it was 
worth while. Nature now veils the trimness 
of art in the elusiveness of age, so that you have 
a sense of far time framed in well-kept beauty. 

Similarly the Parisienne has inherited in her 
dress the taste of generations of French women, 
and it has become part of her. Her triumph 
is that she uses it as a glass for her personality, 
and when you happen upon that word you have 
found the ultimate secret of the Parisienne. 
She is a personality, never a clothes-horse, the 
mistress of her wardrobe, whether it be small 
or large, never its bondwoman. 

There is a famous picture of an English 
woman, in the ripe beauty of sorrow, standing 
by an old rose-bowl and turning its crumpled 
176 



THE WAR PARISIENNE 

leaves with her hand. It suggests English 
womanhood at its best, sweet, fresh and 
buoyant, like English summer scenery after a 
rainstorm. But you look on, almost expecting 
that English figure to raise her hand and pour 
the perfumed rose-leaves about her. The act 
would interpret the soul within her, the ulti- 
mate appeal to Nature, when she has found the 
fabrics of art an insufficient expression. 

By contrast you imagine the French woman, 
the Parisienne, bringing out her true self in 
the spirit of art. The rose-leaves will be there, 
but they will be caught on to the fabric, oh so 
deftly and cunningly. There will be one at the 
slim waist, another at the less slim bosom, still 
another where the throat curves into the neck, 
and a crowning bloom in the dark hair. The 
English woman is the laden rose-bush of the 
garden, a very fair flower in Nature's keeping, 
the French woman a rambler bower, which 
climbs over the wall and far away, art calling 
to Nature. 

Picture and personality; that is the inner 
difference and the essential contrast between 
the Parisienne and her London sister. You 
will see more really beautiful women in London 

N 177 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

than in Paris, but more women of evident and 
distinctive personality in Paris than in London. 
The Parisienne carries herself about with her, 
has her own smile, her own laugh, her own 
frown, if she ever frowns, and always that 
sparkle as of spring water in a cool place, or, 
if you like, of dry champagne fizzing in a glass 
at the top of the forenoon. 

She does not smoke cigarettes in the face of 
the world, this Parisienne, nor, after dinner, 
does she drink liqueurs or other ardent spirits, 
not if she be the Parisienne of whom one may 
write. But she will make herself beautiful in a 
crowd, and think nothing about it, opening her 
little vanity-bag, examining her face in its 
mirror, powdering her cheeks, even putting a 
fresh slash of red on her lips. She does it all 
with perfect artistry, " feels good," as the 
Americans say, and you agree with her, as she 
marches off, stepping freely, elegantly in her 
vivandiere skirt, cut, like herself, on lines of 
simple correctness. 

Phil May was a master of the line in black 
and white drawing, and the Parisienne is a 
mistress of it in dress, preferably black and 
white, for those colours are her sure anchorage, 

i 7 8 



THE WAR PARISIENNE 

especially in this wonderful but never, to the 
women of France, downcast time. If you 
knew Phil May you will remember that his first 
sketch of anything had as many lines as a cob- 
web, and that he gradually scored them out 
until only those which were vital remained, 
the life lines, he called them. The Parisienne 
may, if we knew all, arrive at her secret of 
elegance by the elimination of the needless, but 
anyhow she has it in a triumphant measure, 
and boasts not at all about it. 

" You know what women are," said Steven- 
son once, adding, " No ; they are much more." 
He was thinking of the Parisienne — the war 
Parisienne. 



179 



XXI. A CALVARY OF ARMAGEDDON 

Come and see Paris at prayer in the Madeleine ', 
feel with her, pray with her, have faith like 
hers. It is a grand House of Prayer, rich in 
echoes of France's past greatness, not less rich 
in heralds of her future. Spiritually, no nation 
engulfed in Armageddon has matched France ; 
so quietly resolute in suffering, so calmly heroic 
in action, so dedicated to victory. Yes ; come 
to the Madeleine and be uplifted ! 



SOMEWHERE. July 1915. 

AT the famed Church of the Madeleine you 
will see the Passion and Calvary of France 
in this war, and how nobly she bears them. 

From morn to eve, women in black climb 
those long steps looking towards the Place de la 
Concorde, a mocking name just now. They 
come to pray for their men at the war, that God 
may keep them safe, or, if they be dead, for 
their souls. They kneel before the altars in 
the great house of faith, communing with the 
absent spirits, sad but heroic figures. All are 
equal there, the rich and the poor, all are 
sisters, sorrowing with each other in heart- 
breaks, consoling each other with the grand 
thought that it is for La Patrie. 

The French men come, also, to watch and 
pray in the far-vaulted Madeleine, men who 
are older than the military age, and lads who 
are younger, because the others are at the front. 
Often they are mourners beside a coffin, borne 

183 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

in for the last funeral rites, the mortal remains 
of a soldier home from the war. The heavy 
doors swing open for a moment, making a 
window, through which the spiritual world 
within meets the heavens without. Reverently 
the coffin, simple itself, covered only with 
simple flowers, is laid on trestles, while another 
passes out, giving it place. Veritably it is the 
Vale of Tears ; but there are none, or hardly 
any, though to hold them back is torture ; 
because here is the sacrifice to La Patrie. 

Even Lemaire's carving of the Last Judg- 
ment, framed in dim religious lights from the 
altars, dream-like in the floating incense, seems 
to have a new, personal message for the afflicted. 
Mary Magdalene kneels beside the Christ, 
pleading, as you think, that out of so much 
suffering there may come a blessed world. To- 
wards this end the good and the wicked in the 
war are arranged to the right and left of the 
Redeemer. The Angel of the Last Trump is 
there to sound judgment, with groups illus- 
trative of the Ten Commandments. What are 
they saying of the enemy from across the 
Rhine ? At times in her history Paris may 
have forgotten her forms of religion, but she 
184 



A CALVARY OF ARMAGEDDON 

has never lost her faith, and to-day it rises in 
song at the Madeleine. 

High Mass within those walls, which go back 
almost to Louis Quatorze himself, is always as 
majestic a rite as the Roman Church can show 
doubting men and believing women. A devout 
atmosphere, a beautiful setting, the gleam of 
white and red vestments against rich gems of 
art, the veiled solemnity of the cavernous roof, 
the welling music, the clear, melodious voice 
of the preacher ; there is all that, but there is 
something more at once sweet and fragrant, 
resolved and triumphant. It is the soul of 
France, going up in prayer at the Madeleine, 
while, elsewhere, with high heart and strong 
hand, she redeems the unbelieving Hun, so 
showing him the straight path, alike at the 
altar and on the battlefield. 

You need a natural sympathy to understand 
the flooded feelings of the French, as they 
pour them into this High Mass on a war Sun- 
day morning in Paris ; and a little, direct 
memory of the hour when Armageddon broke 
will set it working. The memory concerns a 
well-known French woman novelist who was 
then at her cottage where the sea looks towards 

185 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

England. Mobilisation ! The coastguardsman 
fluttered up the signal of it at his yard-arm, 
the terrible colours bespeaking blood and fire, 
for the French speak in imagery when they 
are moved. At last the nightmare which had 
lain over France for so many years, the skeleton 
at every feast, although it was never feared ! 
It meant anything — death, invasion, a ghastly 
procession of things. 

" But what we all asked each other," I was 
told by my friend on the very steps of the 
Madeleine, " was, what of England ? Is she 
coming in with us ? We had a few English 
visitors in our little seaside village, and we 
asked and asked them what of England ? Was 
she really with us, as well as for us ? What 
could they say, our unimportant English 
visitors, to comfort us while we waited ? Per- 
haps those early August days, while we won- 
dered, represented the hardest spiritual trial 
France has had in the war, except when the 
Germans were at the gates of Paris. And then 
the relief when England, moving, as we have 
learned to know, in her own wise, decisive way, 
ranged herself actively by our side ! Your 
Navy, yes ; your highly trained, brilliant little 
186 



A CALVARY OF ARMAGEDDON 

Army, yes, also ; but what filled our hearts 
most was the thought, ' Ah, if England, who 
has nothing to gain, fights with us, then we are 
infallibly right, and the gage of battle is cer- 
tainly the highest and purest, none other than 
the moral honour of Europe.' " 

" What of the faith and fire within us ? " 
Thomas Hardy asks, and if he could search 
the hearts of Paris, gathered in the Made- 
leine, he would find them broad-based on the 
supreme moral issue which is at stake. Being 
spiritual, it leads to religion, and everybody 
tells you in Paris that the war has already 
brought a strong, silent revival across the 
doors of all the churches in France. The 
emotion of suffering has made for that, but so 
has another circumstance ; the heroism of the 
priests who have unfrocked themselves and 
taken their places in the fighting line. They 
have not merely become, as was natural, 
leaders in spirit of the men fighting with 
them, but they have led in brave deeds. This 
France knows, and she is not going to forget 
it " when the hurly-burly's done " and she 
counts up her roll of honour and makes it 
public. 

i8 7 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Even the French poets are fighting or doing 
something near the trenches, so they come 
into the grand Sunday song at the Madeleine. 
The Muses found Scottish Robert Burns at the 
plough, singing and loving because he must 
do both, or not be himself. The war found 
one eminent French poet reading his own 
rondels in Paris salons, and prepared to stop 
in surprise if a rustling skirt, welcome enough 
at another time, mistuned the cadence of his 
voice. He went forward gladly, anxious to 
play his man's part, though rough, rude hand- 
work had never been his before. When he 
wrote to his friends in Paris, what, do you 
think, had he to tell them ? Why, that he 
had been turned into a cook for a platoon of 
plain soldier men, and that he was doing his 
cooking on a grill of bayonets captured from 
the Germans. 

Gladness of this kind, the comfort and joy 
of doing the manly thing, there is in a service 
at the historic Madeleine in Paris. But with 
it walks sadness, for the martyrs are as an 
army, and, moreover, there being worse 
things than death, how has it fared with the 
quick up there where the Germans are in 
188 



A CALVARY OF ARMAGEDDON 

occupation ? Whispers that rumour carries 
south give their own surging petition to the 
invocation of France facing her Passion and 
Calvary in the church dedicated to St. Mary 
Magdalene. 



189 



XXII. THE BAY OF BISCAY, ! 

Out, across the Bay P Surely, with, for port of 
arrival, Bordeaux, where the French Govern- 
ment went when the Germans menaced Paris 
at the beginning of Armageddon. Nelson often 
set out across the Bay in quest of the French 
who, a hundred and more years after, are our 
gallant Allies on sea as well as on land. It is, 
then, historic ocean to sail, in " Nineteen and 



SOMEWHERE, August 191 5. 

The next day, 
There she lay, 
In the Bay of Biscay, O ! 

I WAS trying to think what follows when the 
Captain put his hand on my shoulder and 
said, " Well, how does it all square with the 
song ? " 

" Oh," I answered, " you, who have been 
across and back and up and down the Bay of 
Biscay so often, can best tell that." 

" Perhaps," he said, as he leaned over the 
rail and surveyed the sea with that far-away, 
yet intimate look, a mixture of hope and the 
wistful, which dwells in the eyes of men who 
constantly go down to the sea in ships, doing 
the world's business in great waters ; especially 
when it is necessary to keep watch and ward 
lest an enemy submarine heave in sight, though 
the Bay of Biscay has been too southerly for 
them to take the risks. 
193 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

We were half-way to Bordeaux, the truest 
ocean voyage you can manage from the Thames 
within a few days space of time, and the sea 
was kindly, sunlit, comforting to jaded nerves. 
It was a case of having another look at the sea 
in war time, a great sight, believe me, even when 
nothing happens. We had passed Ushant in 
the early night — Ushant with its gnarled rocks, 
its wicked currents and its star gleams from 
revolving lamps — and were now in the full 
swing of the Atlantic as it pours into the Bay 
of Biscay. The scene to the Captain was like 
an old familiar face, for he had been on the 
London-Bordeaux route nigh twenty years. 

He had been down-across Biscay some 500 
times, and up again as often, and in those 
voyages had covered countless sea miles. More- 
over, when he was young, he sailed out of the 
Channel and through the Bay for many a port 
in far parts, winning a knowledge which makes 
charming talk, if you can tap it. What he did 
not know, therefore, of its ways, its humours, 
its philosophy — because every great track of 
the ocean has its own philosophy — is not worth 
knowing. Still, let your sea master be ever so 
much a master of the sea, he is always learning, 
194 



THE BAY OF BISCAY, O! 

never certain, a humble man in blue at the bar 
of the gods. 

" Yes," he said quietly, " the supreme thing 
in the sea is its unsureness, its uncanniness, by 
which I mean that you must always be prepared 
for surprises from it, must always regard it as 
the enemy whom you may have to fight at any 
moment. No man setting out on a real sea 
voyage can say, for certain, when he will get 
there, because his ancient enemy and friend 
may at any moment give him a new secret to 
solve. He learns to say that he will get there, 
all being well, and the awesome element in the 
ocean keeps him to this, even when he knows 
from experience that the Bay of Biscay, at its 
worst, is an infinitely safer place than the 
motor-plagued streets of London. In all my 
voyagings I have never lost a life, never had an 
accident worth mentioning, and usually our 
travellers to Bordeaux have a good time afloat." 

Why, then, the evil reputation of the Bay 
of Biscay, its name of terror, particularly with 
those who seldom go down to the sea in 
ships ? The answer came, clear and convincing, 
although it seemed far enough away, as we 
looked down on the ribbons of lace which the 
195 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

bow of the ship was weaving out of the salt 
waters. 

White laces of exquisite pattern trailed away 
from her on a sea ground of blue or green, a 
costume which all the beautiful women of the 
world might wear if they were united into one 
woman. History tells us of the famous field 
of the cloth of gold, but it could never have 
matched this lace of the sea which the dainty 
little liner was spinning ! Oh, surely the Bay 
of Biscay, so clothed in beauty, could not be 
angry ? 

" It really would not matter to us if she 
were," murmured the Captain, and mentally 
he patted his ship, " because she's a dandy in 
any weather. But believe me the Bay of Bis- 
cay can give the biggest liner a dusting when 
there is a full-rigged gale coming up it from 
the south-west. What you get then is the 
whole force of the Atlantic, as it rolls over from 
America, thrown into an area whose shape con- 
centrates these waters, driving for a lee-shore. 
The ill name of Biscay is no doubt a legacy of 
the sailing-ship days, because, if they came near 
it, they ran the risk of being caught in a sou'- 
wester. Gradually, for all they could do, the 
196 



THE BAY OF BISCAY, O! 

winds and waves, when they got to a height, 
with stealthy, changing currents beneath, 
would force them inward, nearer to what the 
sailor least desires in a storm, the land. The 
sailing ships of old therefore kept away from 
the Bay of Biscay, over towards the Lizard, alike 
if they were going out from England and if they 
were coming home. It had for them terrors 
which it does not possess for a well-equipped 
steamer, although, indeed, its toll of disasters, 
going back to that of the City of London, is 
impressive enough." 

So that was why the Bay of Biscay was chris- 
tened evilly by the men who in the age of sails 
lifted anchor to such a chanty as : 

Fare you well, my bonnie young girl, 
For we're bound to the Rio Grande ! 

" Many a time when I was boy and youth," 
said the Captain, " have I heard that chanty, 
' Away to Rio ! ' The men would be at the 
capstan, and perhaps there would be a West 
Indian negro on it as it went round, leading 
the music, even playing a fiddle. Those negroes 
had melodious voices, and one was generally 
shipped in a big sailing vessel in order to lead 
197 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

the chanties. A ship-master knew that unless 
the men sang them heartily, that if they were 
' dumb-pullers,' there was something wrong, 
and that he was probably not going to have a 
happy and therefore an efficient crew. He 
listened eagerly for the first notes of the hands 
at the capstan, no matter what the chanty 
might be, for they were many and various." 

It might, added the Captain, dropping un- 
consciously into reminiscence of the old sea- 
dogs of the " wind-jammer," be the rollicking 
lines, smelling of sprees ashore : 

Whisky is the life of man : 
Whisky, O Johnny, whisky 
O whisky is the life of man 
O whisky for my Johnny. 

Or again it might be the jubilant note of a 
homeward-bound craft setting a top-gallant sail : 

Blow to-day and blow to-morrow, 
Blow, breeze, blow ; 
Blow us home across the water ; 
Blow, my bully breeze, blow. 

One chanty, with a tender note, the Captain 
recalled as a particular favourite with the old- 
time sailor : 

Rolling home across the sea, 
Rolling home to dear old England, 
Rolling home, dear land, to thee. 

I98 



THE BAY OF BISCAY, O! 

There, you see, comes in the patriotic note, 
the love of country which in a good sailor, as 
in all good men, is next to love of wife or sweet- 
heart. Sailor men, because they wander, 
because they are ever on the sea, a-wanting in 
love of country ! Nay, nay ! The Captain 
looked up almost with a start, for, as he re- 
marked, absence on a voyage does make the 
heart grow fonder, whether or not it always 
does so on land. 

This is another case where the elevating 
effect of the ocean makes itself felt ; it lifts a 
soul which is down and purifies one which is 
already set on high. Reverence is the influence 
in one case, awesomeness the influence in the 
other, and the two may meet in a very ordinary 
man. What they give him is possibly the raw 
thing, superstition ; but that is just his word 
for the unexplainable, what he worships fear- 
fully. " And, indeed," the Captain broke in 
quietly, " the sea has secrets no man will 
fathom, even if he were the commander of that 
ghost-ship, the Flying Dutchman, which, we 
are told in story, sails on for ever." 

It was the summing up word of a complete 
sailor ; and then the relief of silence came to 
199 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

our speculations. We just watched the near 
waves cuddling past, without a ruffle in sight 
from an enemy submarine, and the far blue of 
the Bay of Biscay; saying nothing more. 
Presently the lunch bell called, " Come and 
say pretty nothings to pretty women across 
pretty dining tables in the Bay of Biscay, O ! " 



200 



XXIII. A LAND OF HEALING 

One may so call the Atlantic shores of France, 
from the Loire, across the Garonne, to the 
Pyrenees, for much of the human " waste of 
war " has gone there to heaL Tou cannot get 
away from Armageddon, nor do you desire that, 
every man wishing to take his share, small or 
large, in it. But you will see it across afresh, 
far angle if, from Bordeaux, you strike down 
country to the Pyrenees. 



SOMEWHERE, August 1915. 

I^HE magic of the picture-books of our child- 
hood is that they so often come true in 
after-life. The years bear us on a journey, 
and somewhere we meet the scene of one of 
those pages, jutting out of the far edges of a 
great war. It is different, because it is actual- 
ity, yet the same, for the child mind has a sure 
instinct in colour, atmosphere. 

Here was I, swinging through that region of 
Southern France which is called the Landes. 
I had been delivered, with comfort and dis- 
patch, from London across the Bay of Biscay 
to Bordeaux, city of history, old and recent. 
There I had taken train for Biarritz, San Sebas- 
tian, and a look at the Lower Pyrenees, a 
spacious region which many wounded French 
soldiers have found a land of healing. But that 
old woodcut of the man on stilts in the Landes 
was an extra in the journey. It simply rose out 
of the pine woods as we swept through them, 
203 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

and with it came a memory of the queer, hard 
text which had accompanied the picture. 

Yes, in the Landes people walked on stilts and 
looked giants, because the ground was all soggy 
with water or soft with sand dunes. Yes, it 
was an area of the French Atlantic shore where 
men had to tread gingerly on Nature ; where, 
indeed- — and this was the weirdest thing — 
one layer of soil ate up the rest, a sort of can- 
nibal act, and let the sea in to complete the 
destruction. That was the bad fairy, but, as 
is the case both in story-books and real life, the 
good fairy now arrived on the scene. He was 
a French engineer, who, at the end of the 
eighteenth century, planted the Landes with 
sea-pines, whose roots have absorbed the wicked 
elements of the soil and kept it together from 
the thieving Atlantic. 

Assuredly I was having a fairy-tale realised 
to the eye, and in my journey of nigh a hundred 
miles among those pine trees I even saw three 
Landes-men on stilts ; and more than three on 
crutches, hard evidence of the war. A good 
deal of rain had fallen, it lay in thin pools and 
sheets, and the three looked out their stilts, 
although these are not now generally used, 
204 



A LAND OF HEALING 

thanks to the reformation. But they were old 
men whom I saw, men as I liked to think, who 
had appeared from Sleepy Hollows to watch 
the train go by. 

My glimpses of them brought me not only 
a suggestion of age, but of sadness, and that is 
the abiding tone of the Landes. The pines are 
all gashed down the sides, so that their resin 
may be collected for turpentine, the veritable 
" turps " with which the London maid-of-all- 
work cleans her " brasses." You had to weep 
with that endless forest of pines, each, appar- 
ently, bleeding to death, and yet holding on 
to a nobly useful life. 

We had good talk on that, other country- 
side aspects, and the war, as we travelled, for 
there were three of us in the compartment, 
a French major on inspection duty, an Ameri- 
can widow " doing " this quiet corner of 
Europe, and myself. That information was to 
evolve, because we might have remained gloomy 
strangers but for a happy accident. A jolt of 
the train flung the widow's dressing-case from 
the rack above her down to the floor. The 
major and myself hastened to pick it up and 
assess the damage. 

20| 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

" Just missed your feet," he said to the 
widow, gathering up the case and securing all 
the thanks and glory. " Oh, it could not pos- 
sibly have hit them," said I daringly, in revenge 
for having been anticipated, and the widow 
and the major laughed. Perhaps you have 
noticed how something said which, well ! should 
not have been said, at once brings strangers 
into talking range, nay into making confidences, 
if only because these are not likely to be 
repeated. 

On Bayonne, where you finally emerge from 
the gloom of the Landes, the French major 
gave us a delightful little lecture. " And 
wasn't the bayonet invented here ? " the 
American widow asked, smiling coquettishly. 
" Oui, madame, certainement, certainement I n 
answered the gallant man of war. But nothing 
is certain, or hardly anything, and one parts 
with delightful French majors, and even with 
American widows " doing " a quiet corner of 
Europe all alone. 

" You'll take the high road, And I'll take 

the low," says the old Scots ballad, and so it 

is on a railway journey. There is a halt, an 

outgoing of some passengers and an incoming 

206 



A LAND OF HEALING 

of others, an ordered scramble by those wiry 
French porters — most of them old too, the 
others having gone fighting — who move trunks 
bigger than themselves with ease ; then a 
whistle of readiness, a responsive toot on a tin 
whistle — it must be that — which the driver 
carries somewhere, and you have turned a new 
stage — say, one landing you in Biarritz. Louis 
Napoleon made it famous when he housed his 
beautiful Empress in a villa there, Queen Vic- 
toria carried on the royal tradition, and King 
Edward came home from Biarritz to die in 
London. Recently it has been filled with 
stricken soldiers from the northern trenches, 
moved south to gain new leases of life. 

That is the finest mission of its history, but 
a place must have its own native qualities to 
keep fame, and the life of Biarritz is its sea. It 
is a living sea, surgent in its mien, fresh from 
the far depths of the Atlantic, of a wondrous 
blue in colour, and laden with an air which 
stirs the blood. Nowhere by land, perhaps, 
will you find so sea-like a sea, and it is set in a 
coast scenery of rude picturesqueness. There 
are great rocks, bold promontories, quiet coves 
to which the incoming waves tell their stories 
207 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

before they spread themselves like snow on the 
beach of soft sand. 

You never weary of the Biarritz sea, in sun- 
shine, in rain or in storm, because it lives to all 
those moods. You can watch it for hours 
from your open window, or lie contentedly 
awake at night, listening to its harmony and 
finding language for it in the lines of John 
Davidson, who, himself, lies buried in the sea : 

For from the shore there came sea-minstrelsy 
Of waves that broke upon the hollow beach, 
With liquid sound of pearling surges blent, 
Cymbals, and muffled drums and dulcimers. 

You have, too, at Biarritz, anyhow when 
there is no Armageddon, a passing show of 
peoples ; the English, strong, with natural 
character, rather aloof ; the French, affable, 
talkative, most attractive in their women ; the 
Spanish, black-haired, olive-skinned ; the Rus- 
sians, tall, touched with an elegant barbarism. 
Several times a year Biarritz is a world of life 
and fashion, and if humanity interests you, here 
you may study it to your fill. You hear as 
many languages as there were at the Tower of 
Babel, but there is no confusion at Biarritz, for 
somehow everybody, wishing to understand, 
208 



A LAND OF HEALING 

seems to succeed. When you have had enough, 
though that will not be soon, you can hie 
yourself over the Spanish border to San 
Sebastian. 

" It has less of the colour of living, more of the 
colour of the past, and it is definitely Spanish. 
The difference between France and Spain hits 
you in a score of ways the moment you leave the 
one for the other. Artistry, nattiness, the using 
of everything to its fullest, are characteristics 
of France, scarcely of Spain. It is harder, 
rougher, less tidy, with the air of a back-garden 
rather than of a trimly-kept front garden. The 
Spaniards are without the friendly ease of the 
French, more distant, less open in their atti- 
tude. The French make you at home, the 
Spaniards, with an equal courtesy, let you come 
or go. 

You note the wealth of hair which Spanish 
women have, thanks to their habit of wearing 
it uncovered ; but it is a generality, nothing 
of individual interest, like the smile of a French- 
woman's eye as she talks. San Sebastian, 
though, is lovable, intimate, as it lies on its 
shell-shaped bay, with the waves coming in 
quietly and the sun shining. Beyond the heads 
p 209 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

is the broad Atlantic, but within there, is a 
golden horn where one might stay and dream. 
That will not do, however, for there are the 
Lower Pyrenees, away behind these Atlantic 
shores, to be viewed, and are they not wonder- 
ful ? You have mountain panoramas which 
rise, chimney-like, tier upon tier, seeming, like 
Jacob's ladder, only to end in the sky. The 
colour is a dancing blue, in which peaks and 
pinnacles appear to float, as if they might topple 
over. It is a world " pavilioned in splendour," 
especially as the evening falls into the night 
and the stars come out, and you travel north 
towards the dull sound of the guns, tocsin of 
Armageddon. 



210 



XXIV. THE RED EDGE OF WAR 

The human side of Armageddon, how it feels to be 
fighting in the heart of it, interests us all 
intensely. We cry out for knowledge on that 
text, knowing that its heroism will put the 
inhumanity of Armageddon to shame, and, in 
fact, comfort us a little. Here are some human 
sparks of the great blaze, gathered at close 
quarters, and put on record with a due care 
and a just sympathy. 



SOMEWHERE, September 19x5. 

YOU cannot, if you be a civilian, get into the 
war zone, not even if you have all the 
recommendations of a Bishop, or all the elusive- 
ness of Puck himself. 

You can, however, win the red edge of it, 
where it throws out its living servants and its 
dead victims ; and it was there I met a French 
captain and an Irish chaplain. What I heard 
from them was " News of battle, news of 
battle " ; and, behind that, the deeper note 
of Thomas Campbell's lines : 

There is a victory in dying well 

For freedom — and you have not died in vain. 

The young French captain had lived in Eng- 
land, and knew English well, and that was why, 
after four months of fighting in the Argonne, 
he had been put on intelligence duty between 
the French and the British armies. 

" But you ask me," he said, " about war : 
what is it like ; is it really hell ? I tell you it 
213 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

is. It must be, because its end is the de- 
struction of the enemy — that is death. Now, 
a dear friend of mine was killed, and lay for a 
day half-way between our trenches and the 
Germans. He had a farewell letter in his 
pocket for his young wife, and I must get and 
send it. I did, and I was trying also to carry 
in his body for a French burial, when the Ger- 
mans opened fire on us. A bullet shot away 
the crest of my cap, and cut a furrow through 
my hair. * What bad shots they are ! ' stut- 
tered my soldier-servant, who was helping me 
with my friend. We laughed and regained 
the trenches ; and that's war." 

" A very near thing," I said to him ; and he 
answered, " All things are near in war, until 
the last thing when you fall, casual-like, as if 
the moment had been waiting for you and 
found you off your guard. Well, we had half- 
a-dozen German prisoners in our trench, and 
the Germans had been guilty of treachery and 
of treating our wounded badly ; and we said 
to those prisoners, ' What of you ? ' They told 
us of their wives and their children, of their 
desire to fight no more, and how sweet a thing 
it would be if they were allowed to be free. 
214 



THE RED EDGE OF WAR 

' How can that be ? ? I said to my men ; and 
the prisoners were marched away, and we heard 
no more of them — and, again, that's war. 
We fight in red madness, and you hardly know 
what happens in the fever of it all. I would 
not say that kindly things do not happen be- 
tween individual men on opposite sides, but 
mostly you find them on your own side." 

There Mon Capitaine was silent for a little, 
and then he said, * You know, my servant in 
the trenches, although quite a common man, 
was a great chevalier. Somebody was shot 
through the brain at a look-out hole, and a 
cry went up in the trench of my name. He 
heard it, thought I had been hit, and came 
rushing up to me. When he saw I was still 
alive he cried with joy, and I embraced him. 
That is what we French do — we fight, fight, 
oh ! so hard, oh ! so bitterly, but our hearts are 
tender, and we weep over a little thing and 
embrace each other. You asked me what is 
war. It is hell, with glimpses of Heaven. 
I could tell you more, but of one thing I am 
sure, that not since the days of Napoleon 
himself has France had so valorous and 
sacrificing an army as she has to-day, an 
215 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

army which is going to tear victory from the 
Germans." 

Mon Capitaine, a handsome fellow, with a 
hawk's black eye, softened by humour, pulled 
out a fresh cigarette, lit it and said that English 
matches were certainly better than French 
matches. But away up in the trenches of the 
Argonne they had been mighty glad to make 
the stump of a cigarette give fire to half-a- 
dozen smoke-famished men. 

The Irish chaplain had been a man inured to 
peace, till war called him. He had been in it 
for long months, and had come to know it as 
not merely hell, but the grave. His eyes were 
gentle and fair, and they looked at you with a 
far-away, misty shadow, as if they had seen 
many things which were beyond words, even 
beyond nightmares. 

" Ah," he said, " we and the doctors meet 
the saddest side of war. We are not stirred by 
the charge, because we are not in it. We fore- 
gather with the sheaves of the wounded and 
the sheaves of the dead, and that is a dark har- 
vest to be among. Mostly, too, it is in the 
dark of night that we go forth, because in this 
trench warfare that is the time of the fighting. 
216 



THE RED EDGE OF WAR 

The night may hide you, but it does not stop 
a bullet or the awful drone of shell-fire." 

He hesitated for a minute, as if there was 
something he was going to say which he did 
not quite know how to say. " It is just this," 
he went on, " that I sometimes wonder why 
the horrible thing need ever end at all. Those 
trenches away to the north there — and he 
waved his hand towards them — are like rows 
of turnips in a field, so numerous that when 
you have destroyed or captured one, you are 
face-to-face with another. It reminds me of 
nothing so much as the taking in of new 
ground on an Irish hillside. You have got a 
little bit, and you think you are going to make 
progress, but you suddenly find yourself against 
a new order of rocks, and you say, ' How long, 
oh ! how long ? ' " 

" That," he went on, " is the human spirit 
of ordeal which a chaplain catches from the 
trenches when he is burying the dead, not 
singly, mind you, but in numbers. Ah ! it is 
a tearful thing to see fine young lads, with 
the bloom of manhood scarcely ripe on their 
faces, laid in graves, covered over and left for 
ever and ever. Not a drum is heard, not a 
217 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

funeral note, except the quiet service, the 
1 Last Post,' and then on we go to the same 
thing over and over again." 

That is war as the Irish chaplain knew it ; 
that is what follows the blowing up of a trench, 
the swift infantry attack, the rout of the enemy, 
and then the counting up of the dead. It is 
the cold setting down by Death of his martyrs, 
whose passing makes the martial and noble 
Roll of Honour. 

" Generally," he remarked, " a trench battle 
lasts about an hour, and its infernal violence, 
what with big guns and small guns and bombs 
and rifles, could hardly last longer. The thing 
overwhelms the individual man, who is merely 
an item that survives, by the mercy of Provi- 
dence or the chance of things, who crawls 
through, wounded, or does not crawl through 
at all, but lies dead far from the land of his 
fathers. Yes, war is the grave as well as hell, 
with purgatory often between, but the great 
gleam of it, to me, is always the human splen- 
dour of the men. They are not merely fine, 
they are majestic, and I often feel how poor 
a thing it is to be a mere chaplain beside 
them." 

218 



THE RED EDGE OF WAR 

He had no more to say, or rather there was 
no more he would say, so we just sat quiet, 
exchanging the inner, unsaid thoughts which 
shoot across these newly turned pages of real 
war, as set down by a fighting captain and a 
praying " sky-pilot." 



219 



XXV. THE FAITH WITHINUS 

" What of the faith and fire within us P " Thomas 
Hardy asks in his " Song of the Soldiers" He 
is addressing the " Men who march away Ere 
the barn- cocks say, Night is growing grey, To 
hazards whence no tears can win us" But 
" What of the faith and fire within us, Men 
who march away" or who do not — all of us P 
What should it be P 



SOMEWHERE, September 191 5. 

YOU must have faith to encounter Arma- 
geddon and all the strange things which 
it brings forth in its labour. You need not 
merely courage, for most of us can be brave on 
occasion, but the pure quality of belief, which 
takes you nearer to a religion, to a philosophy. 

The latter is reason, and it is a great armoury, 
even if it be cold, like chilled steel. Faith is, 
by contrast, warm and comforting, a fire to 
which you may hold your heart, giving and 
getting the life of the spirit, for faith lives on 
the heights of the soul, not in the fat valleys of 
the physical being. 

Now there is no question about the faith of 
the " men who march away," because they 
back it with life or death in this world, and life 
or death in the other world. They live their 
faith in action, dying for it, if need be, like that 
fine moral hero young William Gladstone, one 
among a thousand moral heroes. 
223 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

He, the heir to a great name, the hope of an 
illustrious family, felt that it was not enough 
to send round the fiery cross among his people 
of the Welsh Borders. It might be good to 
raise fighting men, but the whole duty of a 
citizen was to go with them. Young Glad- 
stone had, perhaps, little of the natural sol- 
dier in his sweet personality, so his faith was 
all the finer. He went, he fell in action, and 
his example is secure in our memory, alike for 
its simple beauty and its weeping pathos. 

We may be sure that his school of faith for 
Armageddon was clear, a faith which saw all 
the trials, counted them up and marched for 
the light beyond. But it is curious how few 
people, as one finds, have made for themselves 
a working catechism of the things that matter 
in a time like this ; and how many just scramble 
along on the latest news, and the changing 
values of rumour. 

They may still be half inclined to believe in 
the rumour that endless train-loads of Russian 
soldiers came through England on their way 
to France, in the early months of the war. 
They may have dabbled in the story of the 
Angels of Mons, clothed in shining armour, 
224 



THE FAITH WITHIN US 

guiding the hard-presssed British Army from 
the engulfing German horde. This shows that 
those people would like to have faith, that it is 
an element in them calling to be satisfied ; but 
how to do it rightly ? 

It should not be so difficult. Are we right in 
this tremendous affair, you and I, the nation 
and its Allies ? Did we not pray that it might 
be avoided, and to the last moment bear testi- 
mony for peace ? Nobody really doubts that 
it was thrust upon the world by a Prussian 
militarism which has to be cut out, like a cancer, 
before the world can be sound again. The 
gamble was for lordship at the sword's point, 
and all that might mean. 

There you have the larger issue for which 
Armageddon stands ; the man free, or the man 
enchained ; the human soul left to its flight, 
or caged to a materialistic pattern ; a world 
with ideals and room to attain them, or a 
machine which relies wholly on the brute 
strength of organisation. One recalls the 
tender lines : 

How does the meadow flower its bloom unfold ? 

Because the lovely little flower is free 

Down to its roots and, in that freedom, bold. 

225 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Often in history wars have been made for the 
" bare-picked bone of majesty," but here the 
throw was for sheer conquest. As Armageddon 
has gone on, the hunger of Prussian militarism, 
in that sense, has become clearer, its " fright- 
fulness " more staggering to humanity. So 
our national instinct, a spiritual rising of the 
people to strike in instantly, was right. " For," 
in the words of dogged Josiah Quincy at Boston 
in 1774, "under God we are determined that 
wheresoever, whensoever, howsoever, we shall be 
called to make our exit, we shall die free men." 

Yes, the shots fired from our trenches over 
there in France and Belgium will always be 
heard round the world, because of their free- 
born message. Our children's children will 
get that message in its fruitfulness and they 
will say gratefully of the plain British men, 
from all corners of the Empire, who wrote it, 
that they faltered not nor failed. It is easy to 
see, looking backward, not so easy in the thick 
of the tumult, but, as Young says in his Night 
Thoughts : 

Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of Death, 
To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun 
And lands Thought smoothly on the further shore. 

226 



THE FAITH WITHIN US 

A righteous cause begets ardency for its 
triumph and that leads to accomplishment in 
action, which is faith made fact. Every good 
heart instinctively opens to what is gracious, 
pure, generous and lofty in purpose ; and 
trials only strengthen this comradeship of true 
men. Therefore, if patience be needed, it is 
on hand, if fortitude be needed, it is present 
in abundance. 

Armageddon is not a war but the birth of a 
new world, and it comes from the womb with 
suffering, like all new life. We must quit our- 
selves well in the ordeal, and see beyond it a 
sunrise of happiness such as mankind has never 
known ; for it is inconceivable that all the old 
ills and wrongs can linger after Armageddon. 

Possibly those are the national, the human 
lines on which one may establish a working 
faith not liable to be upset by the hazards of 
war. They can, for those who stay at home, 
doing their " bit " here, because they are not 
suited to do it there, be warmed by good reading 
and good friendship. 

Our island story has given us a literature rich 
and rare in its inspiration for Armageddon. 
Our personal friendships among each other 
227 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

should include that literature, especially the 
grandest book of all, the Bible. New lights 
and intimate consolations flow from it when it 
is read in a family circle having an empty chair. 
The dear one who filled it is " somewhere in 
France," quietly doing his duty, with no 
thought of finding it fame, or he is at the Dar- 
danelles and sending home an imperishable 
epistle like this : 

" During the next few days we shall be facing 
death every minute. If I am taken off, do like 
the Roman matrons of old — keep your tears for 
privacy, steel your heart and get a dozen re- 
cruits to fill my place. Pray hard for me, and 
if God wills, I shall see it through. I shall go 
into action with a clean heart, and if I emerge 
safely I hope I shall have proved myself a man 
and a leader." 

The faith of our soldier men, so natural, so 
resolute in every circumstance, is a real inspira- 
tion to those who get letters from the front. 
The merry heart comes into every dispatch, 
with the message, " We're all right, everything 
will be all right, never be anxious a minute." 
Thomas Atkins is full of faith, and if he were 
not he could not do the deeds which, as he 
228 



THE FAITH WITHIN US 

would express it himself, he is " putting to his 
score." Every V.C. is a lesson in faith, and it 
has been won in Armageddon a thousand times 
oftener than it has been claimed. 

What of that New Zealander at Gallipoli 
who advanced so daringly that he got beyond 
succour from his comrades and was made sure 
of by the Turks ? Did he lose faith ? Nay ; 
but instead he rose to the heights of it. He 
climbed a rock and signalled back information 
of the Turkish position as, at near range, he 
could see it. A shower of bullets knocked him 
from his perch with one arm broken. But he 
climbed up again, completed his message with 
the other arm, and then died. 

" Have faith and ye shall be whole ! " He 
did better, that unnamed hero, that good and 
faithful servant, for he had faith enough to give 
up his life. It is not enough to say of such a 
man, that he was a patriot. Patriotism, mean- 
ing love of one's country, one's people, one's 
home, is a leading article in the faith needed by 
Armageddon. But our New Zealander rose 
to an atmosphere purer and better even than 
patriotism. His was an action of the spirit, 
of the burning soul within him. 
229 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

And faith begets faith as we think over the 
story of the Highland shepherd, who, when he 
went to the war, bade his wife and children 
never give him up, even if they had bad news 
of him. Well, there was the bad news, but 
every afternoon his little boy at home went 
down the long road to ask the postman if he had 
a letter from father. Always the answer was 
" Nae yet ; perhaps the morn, though ! " and 
many morns passed. 

The fond woman in the shieling, wife or 
widow, she knew not, half lost hope under the 
strain of anxiety. But her boy kept going down 
the long road to meet the postman, and one 
day she saw him rushing back, flourishing a 
missive in his hand. It was a postcard from 
the shepherd, saying he was a prisoner in Ger- 
many, well recovered of a severe wound and 
looking forward to being home again some day. 

Faith ! It kept that simple Highland family 
going through a winter of months. Faith ! 
It is often self-sacrifice, as in the case of the 
" bad man " of a regiment. With two com- 
rades he was in a corner from where there 
was no chance of escape, except through the 
Germans. " It's like this, my sons," he said, 
230 



THE FAITH WITHIN US 

" you have both wives and children to look after 
and I have none. I am as bad as they make 
them and nobody will be the worse if I am shot 
this minute." So saying, he went out into 
the open and took the righting and death for 
himself, while his companions got away. 

The spiritual greatness of Thomas Atkins 
is a sermon as eloquent as his courage, and he 
builds it on faith. We are called to a loft in a 
French barn where three Scottish soldiers, 
separated from their regiment, had sought a 
night's perilous shelter during the retreat from 
Mons. By morning the invading Germans 
were round the barn and the Scotsmen gave 
themselves up for lost. 

" Canna we sing something, very quiet, to 
hearten ourselves," said the corporal, taking 
a New Testament, with the Psalms, from his 
breast pocket. Presently the door of the loft 
opened and a German pikelhaube looked in, 
only to vanish again when the wearer heard, 
in reverent amazement, the twenty-third Psalm 
being sung in a whisper : 

Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale yet will I fear none ill : 
For Thou art with me ; and Thy rod and staff me comfort 
still. 

231 



NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE 

Faith is also love, and of that there is a 
tender sheaf in a letter which a dying French 
soldier wrote to the woman of his heart, and 
which was found unsigned, for there life left 
him, beside his dead body. " Sweetheart," 
he wrote, " fate in this war has treated us most 
cruelly. If I have not lived to create for you 
the happiness of which both our hearts dreamed, 
remember that my sole wish now is that you 
should be happy. Forget me. Create for 
yourself a happy home that may restore to you 
some of the greater pleasures of life. For my- 
self, I shall have died happy in the thought of 
your love. Accept this, the last kiss, from him 
who loved you." 

That love-letter, written in death, is a whole 
catechism to the higher faith, which should 
be the treasure of us all, whether in reverse or 
victory. " War is hell," and Armageddon is 
seven hells wire-fenced in German " frightful- 
ness." But the hotter a furnace burns the 
purer comes forth the molten metal ; and in 
that faith we calmly await the last crack of 
Armageddon, after which, let us pray, there 
shall be no more war. 



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